As Downtown Sells to Virgin, Its Publishing President Says Revenue Is Up 40%

Three years after Downtown Music sold its 145,000-song catalog — including works performed by Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Beyoncé — the president of its publishing division says it makes more money than it did when it owned copyrights. 

That reveal comes amid Monday’s announcement that Universal Music Group’s Virgin Music Group is buying Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in an all-cash deal expected to close by mid-next year.

Emily Stephenson, who since 2023 has been president of Downtown’s suite of publishing companies (Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust and Sheer), says her division will generate more than $200 million in revenue in 2024, a 40% increase from last year and a higher gross than it had in 2020, the year before Concord bought its catalog.

“We are in the middle of extreme growth mode right now,” says Stephenson, who has overseen client acquisition, business development, A&R, rights management and client services for Downtown since March 2023.

Since Stephenson took the lead, the publishing division has signed deals with indie rockers The National, Spirit Music Group and Peso Pluma’s Double P Records. According to the company, it now serves some 2 million songwriters and clients in over 60 countries — more than 40% of them outside the United States — manages over 1.5 million copyrights and has distributed over $100 million in royalties through Songtrust. 

Access to additional funds has helped. In May, Downtown announced it secured another $500 million in credit from Bank of America — on top of its previous $200 million credit facility — to finance advances.

“We have been earnestly and aggressively putting that money to work,” Stephenson says, by offering competitive advances without forcing independent creators to give up any rights. As a result, “We think we’re growing at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the industry,” she says. 

That growth is one of Downtown’s draws. The combined market share held by independent distribution and music companies — i.e. non-major labels and self-releasing artists — rose to 36.7% in 2023, up from 28.6% in 2015, according to MIDiA Research. As a result, the majors have made acquisitions and investments to defend their market share. Downtown’s scale and position of dominance in this segment made it an attractive way for UMG to grow.

However, Downtown’s growth has also led to customer complaints of long wait times at Songtrust and concerns that the platform is becoming more exclusive. Stephenson says there are no plans to restrict who can sign up for Songtrust, adding that over the past year, Songtrust has cut the average response time to customer complaints from 33 days to 17 hours. 

Stephenson, 35, has spent more than a decade at Downtown and previously served as Downtown Music vp of business operations, and she says roughly 70% of the managers in her division have similarly long tenures. 

That experience has helped with client retention and led to facilitating opportunities. This past summer, “Parade” by French composer Victor le Masne, a Downtown client, became the official theme song for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. This holiday season, the team landed Griff’s cover of the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory classic “Pure Imagination” in Target’s Christmas campaign. 

“We are the only player doing this at scale for indie songwriters globally,” Stephenson says. “I think our future is bright.” 

A version of this story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.