HarbourView Equity Partners Acquires ‘Select’ Recorded, Publishing IP from ‘Birthday Sex’ Creator Jeremih

Jeremih, who’s sold ‘select’ parts of his catalog to HarbourView Equity Partners. Photo Credit: Toglenn

HarbourView Equity Partners has officially acquired “select” recorded and publishing IP from 36-year-old Jeremih.Newark-based HarbourView, having expanded its credit facility last month, emailed Digital Music News today about this latest song-rights play. While the business’s concise announcement message doesn’t appear to identify the exact price tag or precise IP behind the agreement, Jeremih (real name Jeremy Felton) released a debut single entitled “Birthday Sex” back in 2009.

That effort, which the Chicago-born musician also co-wrote, promptly climbed the charts and has racked up approximately 440 million streams on Spotify to date. Beyond this especially well-known work, the DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, J Balvin, and Lil Baby collaborator Jeremih has dropped three full-length albums: an eponymous debut project (2009), 2010’s All About You, and 2015’s Late Nights.

Addressing the investment in a brief statement, HarbourView founder and CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares summarized some of the bestselling releases from Jeremih, who previously toured as part of 50 Cent’s Final Lap Tour.

“Jeremih’s hit songs including ‘Oui’, ‘All The Time’, and ‘Don’t Tell Em’ experienced far reaching success, transcending global audiences and cultures and paved the way for a new generation of R&B artists,” communicated the Morgan Stanley vet Sherrese Clarke Soares.

All told, HarbourView’s “diversified catalog” is now said to encompass around 26,500 total works on the master and publishing sides.Notably, the song-rights investor acquired a number of these assets in deals with relatively young professionals – a contrast to the many high-profile agreements finalized with veteran acts throughout the wider catalog arena.

November, for instance, saw the company unveil a transaction with 30-year-old Kane Brown, following a July pact with 33-year-old Blackbear (real name Matthew Musto).

Of course, HarbourView isn’t alone in purchasing music IP from sellers who presumably have at least several decades left in their careers.

CTM Outlander in November scored an agreement with 39-year-old country songwriter Sam Hunt, after singer-songwriter Phil Plested (who’s reportedly in or around his early 30s) sold to Seeker Music in October and 39-year-old Katy Perry did the same, albeit with Litmus Music, in September.

As a whole, though, high rates, economic uncertainty, and other factors have rendered catalog deals – and especially blockbuster transactions – comparatively rare as of late. Moreover, we’ve reported at length about the operational woes of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the publicly traded entity that, for better or worse, fired off all manner of music-IP investments and played a key role in molding the present catalog landscape.