An A&R vet ready to buy big
Neil Jacobson calls himself the best salesman in the music business, and not without reason. Over the course of his two-decade career, he’s pushed multiplatinum records like the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”; more recently, he’s brokered lucrative catalog sales for the likes of Jeff Bhasker and Brendan O’Brien.
Now, the salesman’s looking to buy. Earlier this year, Jacobson founded Music Acquisition Corp. — billed as the music industry’s first special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). He’s raised
$230 million to take the company public, using a focus on music to spur more growth. Such a concept would have been ill-advised 10 years ago, when the music business was facing an existential crisis, but it’s skyrocketing these days, and Jacobson says the time to capitalize is now. “The great boom of the music industry is upon us,” he says. “This is it, this is the one. There’s been a couple times in the past where you could talk about music-industry revolutions creating opportunity, but nothing like this. I’ve never seen the power to the people brought to the level it’s brought now, while at the same time allowing institutions themselves to be pivotal.”
Jacobson jumped on the trend early. He says MAC has spoken with a hundred companies, and is looking at acquiring those that specialize in music — like labels and publishers — as well as music-technology companies, consumer-facing ventures, and social media companies. He cites Beats by Dre headphones, co-founded by Jacobson’s mentor and former Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine, as an inspiration for how he’d like to shape his acquisitions. “I watched Jimmy build Beats by Dre and saw what he did with that,” Jacobson says. “It was about using the power of music culture to drive another product to the next level. . . . Some SPACs are seeking more control, but we’re different in that in our DNA we want to be a wild card. A company can use our expertise in the music business and our capital. . . . [We’ll] be the best board member they’ve ever had.”