Round Hill Music was founded in 2012 by New York-based Josh Gruss to manage the acquisition and exploitation of music copyrights.
In addition, Round Hill Music is a frontline independent music publisher, working with active talent to create new copyrights.
Gruss’s co-founders in the company were Neil Gillis (President of Round Hill) and Richard Rowe.
Round Hill has offices in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles and London.
Round Hill’s three private funds
Gruss started Round Hill Music in 2012 to manage the investment of a private fund – now known as Round Hill’s ‘Music Royalty Fund I’ – which raised just over $200 million from private and institutional investors.
Under Round Hill’s management and advice, ‘Music Royalty Fund I’ acquired music rights for songs performed by The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Celine Dion, the Rolling Stones, and many more.
Round Hill’s ‘Music Royalty Fund II’ was then launched in December 2017, raising $263m.
This cash was partly used to acquire Carlin Music for around $245m, including the Elvis Presley catalog, amongst over 100,000 copyrights.
This fact was confirmed by Round Hill in a press release dated January 16 announcing its $263m Fund IIFund II has already deployed more than $100 million across several investments including the recently-closed acquisition of Carlin Music and the catalog of country songwriter Dallas Davidson.”
In November 2020, Round Hill announced that it had launched a third private fund – Music Royalty Fund III – that had raised $291m.
Round Hill’s UK-listed fund and IPO
Separate from Round Hill’s three privately-raised funds, the company launched a public royalty fund on the London Stock Exchange (Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Ltd) in November 2020.
Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Ltd intended to raise $375 million to acquire all of the copyrights in Round Hill’s first private fund (launched in 2012).
The copyrights in that fund had been independently valued in 2020 at $363 million, gaining significant value over the course of eight years.
However, Round Hill only managed to raise $282 million as part of its IPO, leaving a shortfall in the cash it needed to acquire the targeted copyrights.
In December 2020, Round Hill raised another $46.1 million which, when combined with debt capacity, gave Round Hill more than enough money to acquire the Fund I copyrights at a $363 million valuation.
Acquisition of Zync Music
In November 2017, Round Hill Music acquired a majority stake in Zync Music – a specialist in licensing music to advertising, television, and other media for sync.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed fee, gave Round Hill an in-house sync specialist to promote the use of its copyrights to makers of entertainment and advertising content.
Prior to the acquisition, since being founded in 2002, Zync secured over 15,000 licenses and nearly $100 million for its artist clients.Music Business Worldwide