User:EllenZoe/sandbox/Concord (entertainment company)

Concord is an independent creative rights company that develops, manages and acquires sound recordings, music publishing and theatrical performance rights. It is a private company, funded by long-term institutional capital and members of Concord’s management team. As of the beginning of 2019, the company had approximately 500 staff members in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, London, Berlin and Miami.

Concord’s master recording portfolio contains more than 16,000 active albums, while its publishing catalog contains more than 400,000 copyrighted works spanning all musical genres.

Concord Theatricals manages licenses for shows such as A Chorus Line, Fences, Fun Home, Oklahoma!, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and many others.

History
The origins of Concord can be traced back to when auto dealer and jazz enthusiast Carl Jefferson started the Concord Jazz record label in 1973. He sold the label to Alliance Entertainment in 1994 and succumbed to cancer the following year. In 1999, film/television producer Norman Lear and entertainment executive Hal Gaba purchased the company (Concord Jazz and Concord Records) after Alliance filed for bankruptcy.

In 2004, Concord Records acquired Fantasy, Inc., owner of Prestige, Fantasy, Milestone, Riverside Specialty, and the post-Atlantic Stax catalog. Concord then combined with Fantasy to form the Concord Music Group. Several label acquisitions and partnerships followed including Telarc (2005) and Rounder Records (2010).

In 2013, Concord Music Group was acquired by an investor group led by Wood Creek Capital Management and Sound Investors, LLC. Many of the same investors also owned a majority interest in independent music publisher Bicycle Music Company.

Concord Music Group was merged with Bicycle Music in 2015 to become Concord Bicycle Music. As Concord Bicycle Music, the company acquired Razor & Tie, Vanguard, Sugar Hill, Wind-Up, Fearless Records (2015)  and Musart Music Group including its Edimusa publishing arm (2016).

In 2017, Concord Bicycle Music purchased European-based publishing company Imagem Music Group. After acquiring two theatrical licensing companies, Tams-Witmark Music Library and Samuel French in 2018, the company formed its own Theatricals division.

The company changed its name to Concord in early 2019. Concord operates in three principal lines of business: Music Publishing, Recorded Music and Theatricals.

Concord Music Publishing
In 2017, when Concord (then known as Concord Bicycle Music) purchased the Imagem Music Group, it tripled the size of its catalog bringing it to nearly 400,000 copyrights. The Imagem purchase also brought classical music publisher Boosey & Hawkes and The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization into Concord Music Publishing. Concord’s publishing catalog now includes a vast array of popular music, classical music and many song and stage standards.

In January 2020, Concord acquired a stake in PULSE Music Group, a move into chart-focused A&R. Effective July 2020, Concord will administer the catalog and future signings for PULSE, an additional 10,000 songs.

As of 2020, Concord Music Publishing’s active roster includes Mark Ronson, Noah Goldstein, Ruston Kelly, Denzel Curry, Walshy Fire, Varren Wade, Tofer Brown, Steve Robson, Justin Parker, Dolly Parton, Steve Reich, John Adams, Eric Whitacre, The Revivalists, Jacob Collier, Glen Ballard and Jason Robert Brown.

Concord Music Publishing’s catalog of songwriters and composers includes Pink Floyd, Daft Punk, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Igor Stravinsky, George Harrison, Sammy Cahn, John Fogerty, Robert Johnson, Trent Reznor, Pete Seeger, Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland, Joan Sebastian, Marvin Hamlisch, Leonard Bernstein and Sergei Prokofiev.

Concord Recorded Music
Concord Recorded Music is made up of the original Concord Music Group labels at the time of the Bicycle Music merger (Concord Records, Concord Jazz, Fantasy, Rounder) as well as Loma Vista Recordings (2014) and Fearless Records (2015). This area of Concord's business also includes its KIDZ BOP brand and its Craft Recordings catalog division. In early 2019, the company opened an office in Miami for Craft Latino Recordings.

Concord Records and Jazz

 * Keb' Mo'
 * The Record Company
 * Esperanza Spalding
 * Carlos Santana
 * Boz Scaggs
 * Kristin Chenoweth
 * Jazzmeia Horn

Fantasy Records

 * James Taylor
 * Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
 * Valerie June
 * Prophets of Rage
 * Lukas Nelson
 * Tanya Tucker
 * Steve Perry
 * Elvis Costello
 * Tedeschi Trucks Band

Fearless Records

 * I Prevail
 * Pierce the Veil
 * Ice Nine Kills
 * Underøath
 * IDKHow

Loma Vista Recordings

 * Ghost
 * St. Vincent
 * The Revivalists
 * Marilyn Manson
 * Denzel Curry
 * Common
 * Local Natives
 * Andrew Bird

Rounder Records

 * I’m With Her
 * Sarah Jarosz
 * The War and Treaty
 * Billy Strings
 * Samantha Fish

Craft Recordings

 * Thelonious Monk
 * John Coltrane
 * R.E.M.
 * Traveling Wilburys
 * Otis Redding
 * Isaac Hayes
 * Albert King
 * Miles Davis
 * Little Richard
 * Creedence Clearwater Revival
 * Hans Zimmer

Craft represents the many labels for which these artists' originally recorded, including Sugar Hill, Vanguard, Musart, Savoy Jazz, Stax Vee-Jay, Fania, Independiente and Varese Sarabande.

Craft Latino Recordings

 * Antonio Aguilar
 * Joan Sebastian

KIDZ BOP
Concord’s KIDZ BOP label has sold 20 million albums, generated 3 billion streams, has a featured channel on Sirius XM and an international tour under its name.

Concord Theatricals
Concord purchased theatrical licensing companies Tams-Witmark and Samuel French, and combining then with R&H Theatricals, launched its Theatrical division in 2018. Concord Theatricals services both creators and producers of musicals and plays with theatrical licensing, script publishing and cast recordings. It also develops, licenses, produces and invests in musicals and plays for production.

The professional and amateur theatrical licensing catalog includes Samuel French, R&H Theatricals and Tams-Witmark, representing the works of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Marvin Hamlisch, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, George & Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Kurt Weill, and shows and songs by musical theater composers Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown, Shaina Taub and Michael John LaChiusa.

Concord Theatricals also licenses hundreds of Broadway musicals including Wizard of Oz, A Chorus Line, Hello Dolly, Bye Bye Birdie, Dreamgirls, Hair, and Gypsy.

Playwrights include August Wilson, Neil Simon, Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, Dominique Morisseau, Anne Washburn, Mac Rogers, and Edward Albee.

Concord Theatricals also works with Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Really Useful Group to license the composer and his collaborators’ musicals, including Jesus Christ Superstar, School of Rock, Evita, Cats, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Other Enterprises
In 2019, Concord formed a Film & Television Development and Production Department to oversee all long-form audio-visual content produced by both Concord and third-party companies. This includes music-related documentaries, biopics, scripted theatrical and television projects and music performance films.

Concord is also a member company/investor in Techstars Music and has invested in a range of technology startups.