Evan Winiker, managing partner at Range Media Partners, found himself in a challenging position during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of Range’s acts were struggling to stay afloat during lockdown, which grounded tours around the world. “A number of clients turned to us and said: ‘So what are we going to do this year for money?’” he says.
The calm, soft-spoken Winiker could empathize: Back in the aughts, he got his start as a touring musician himself, playing in bands alongside childhood friend-turned-superproducer Jack Antonoff. Winiker’s band signed its first record deal in high school, and he spent his late teens and twenties gigging around the globe. “It was a beautiful time,” he says now, reflecting back on his early years. “As fun. was blowing up for Jack, though, I was just playing bass every now and then. I knew that touring in a band was not forever for me.” So, by 2013, he linked with Brandon Creed and others to help with management for Bruno Mars and found a new calling as an artist manager.
Related
Fast forward to 2020. Faced with indefinite lockdown, Winiker wanted to find a solution for Range’s artists, so he immersed himself in the fast-growing world of catalog buying and selling. “Our first foray into the catalog space was helping sell some rights for a few of our clients,” he says. About a year later, he says that had expanded to representing numerous record labels, publishing companies and estates on both the buyer and seller sides.
Winiker ultimately took a new angle on the idea of brokering catalog deals by leaning on Range’s massive rolodex of film, TV and music connections. “We’re giving a list of their catalog to the great directors and showrunners that we work with, and we’re saying, ‘Was any of this special for you as a kid?’” he explains. “‘Did any of this resonate with you as a teenager? Is there a song in here that you want to tell a greater story of?’” All this outreach is done in hopes of upping the catalog value before the copyrights even go to market.
Since starting Range’s catalog efforts six years ago, Winiker says the team has been trusted to advise on some of music’s most iconic deals for artists and film/TV composers. This includes advising on the lender side of The Weeknd’s $1 billion plus deal last year. For most other sales, however, Winiker says he is not able to disclose details due to non-disclosure agreements, but does tease, “We are out right now with two of the biggest sales of this year, which is really exciting: mid-eight-figure deals with artists who have evergreens that we all grew up with — songs you hear at every wedding, bar mitzvah and baseball game.”
While Winiker believes “the middleman space is often occupied with a lot of suspect characters, because there’s essentially no barrier to entry for it,” in his first interview about the catalog market, he tells Billboard why what Range is doing in this space is trusted by the top players in the catalog game. “I think few are doing what we’re doing,” he says.
What separates Range from those not-so-great middlemen you mentioned?
I think it’s a lot more than just relationships with buyers and an ability to create a valuation of what you think something is worth. I think we’re taking that and squaring it, essentially adding an engine to create value before the sale.
What could create that value? Can you give an example?
We just started working with an iconic singer’s estate — a 55-plus-year-old catalog. Normally, a broker or middleman would just look at it, figure out what it’s worth, look at all the numbers and royalty streams through the years, and then go out with that. What we do is put all of that together, which is important — we have our due diligence set — but we also go to our talent pool [at Range] and say, “Is there a song in here that resonated with you?” We’re pairing incredible Range creators — from Academy Award-winning directors to Academy Award-winning actors — and essentially setting up projects with them before we go out with the catalog. So when we go out with it, it’s not just about the numbers on the page; it’s about the vehicle that’s going to come out in two years.
One thing that’s really special over the last 10, 15, 20 years is there’s been an amazing breadth of biopics. You saw it with Ray years ago — catalogs go up exponentially when something like that comes out. It brings them back into the cultural conversation. That’s what we do really well.
Do you ever hear from buyers that they almost wish all that value hadn’t been created before they came in, so they could have done it themselves? I imagine some buyers would want to buy low when the catalog hasn’t been exploited at all.
That’s a great question. We’re bridging that gap. We have a few companies on retainer that are buyers, that have already purchased these copyrights and songs, and we go to our talent pool — with these partner companies in mind — and say, “If there’s any song here, or any name, image and likeness that resonates with you, we can go to them and have this conversation.” It’s a lot easier than, say, someone saying, “I love Elton John, I want to make a movie about him.” This kind of approach engineers it from the other side.
Given how popular biopics are right now, are you seeing more interest among catalog buyers in name, image and likeness rights?
Yeah, big time. Everyone that starts a fund where they’re purchasing music royalties has a different thesis. Some of them are in it for just five years — they want to get in and out. Others have long-term tracks with big, high goals, and in order to achieve some of those goals, I think they need to get creative and look toward that. Some of them hire people internally, synch people, to help get the songs into movies and TV shows. And I think some of them are starting to come to us. What we’re seeing is the more success stories we have, the more people are coming in and the more people are talking about it.
What other trends are you seeing right now?
As interest rates go up and down, the cost of borrowing money changes. Buyers that had the power to spend massively in 2021 and 2022 when interest rates were lower are not spending as much now. So their plans have changed for how they’re dispersing money and what they’re investing in. Over the last three years, it’s evened out.
Since you’ve interfaced with so much talent over your career, as both a musician and a manager, what’s a common misconception or fear that an artist might have going into selling their catalog?
I think a rightful fear is, if there’s a lot of income coming in, how do they supplement it? The truth is, you should only do this if you have a smart team of people around you that can advise you on how to invest the money. The best answer I can give is this: Before I was a manager, I was in touring bands for 12 years, and we never had someone who brought us opportunities like this — truly life-changing opportunities. A lot of the people we represent, outside of the bigger evergreen catalogs, are doing deals that change their lives: $5 million, $10 million, $15 million deals. It doesn’t mean the next day you buy a plane or a Porsche, but it gives you the ability to take a breath and say, “OK, I’m going to use some of this to invest in my career. I’m going to use some of this to put away for my kids’ college fund.” I always wished I had someone like that as a manager or representative who brought me those opportunities. That’s a very fulfilling and rewarding part of what we do.
I’ve had a few lawyers recently tell me they’ve seen certain buyers be interested in working in some sort of waiving of approval rights to AI licensing into contracts. Have you seen anything like that in the deals you’re doing?
I’ve seen buyers add in language that is very new and different, and I’ve also seen lawyers strike that out. We’ve got three or four active deals right now, aside from the few we just closed in Q1 of this year, and I’ve seen AI language in there. This isn’t that different from five years ago, when everything was happening with re-records and you were seeing re-record language in every catalog deal. I think there’s certainly going to be language for it in every deal going forward.
In your crystal ball, what do you think the big trends will be in the catalog market five years from now?
The companies that win are going to be the ones that look to grow the value from within — the ones that are not just going to be warehouses for copyrights, where they sit there, but are actively dreaming up ideas. We have amazing partners that we work with on the buyer side. I love Sam Hendel from Chord [Media Partners], Lior Tibon from Duetti. Those guys specifically, we’ve been able to dream up ideas with and do some very special things with.
