Merck Mercuriadis

At 19, after bombarding his favorite label, Virgin Records, with letters, Mercuriadis was hired as a marketing director at Virgin Canada.[10] With Virgin thriving, he moved to the UK office, where his position was expanded to include A&R. In addition to working on records by UB40, The Human League and XTC, Mercuriadis was involved with signing Mary Margaret O'Hara.[11] Her debut album, Miss America was released five years after she was signed, and although the album was universally acclaimed, Mercuriadis found the process of representing the label, rather than the artist, difficult. Realizing that his passion was for musicians—not labels—he left Virgin shortly after the record's release.[12]

In October 1986, Mercuriadis joined Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor, the founders, at Sanctuary Music (Overseas) Limited, a management company based in the United Kingdom. Over 20 years, he helped build The Sanctuary Group PLC encompassing Sanctuary Artist Management, Sanctuary Records Group Limited, Rough Trade Records, Helter Skelter Agency and Bravado Merchandise, Twenty First Artists and Trinifold Management. During this time, Mercuriadis moved from London to New York to build the North American base in 2000.[13] In addition, Mercuriadis and Sanctuary Group relaunched Rough Trade Records with founder Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee in 2001.[14] This initiative included several artists such as The Strokes, The Moldy Peaches, The Libertines, Arcade Fire, Antony And The Johnsons, and The Kills. In New York, Mercuriadis served as chief executive officer of Sanctuary Group North America until December 2004. Then, Sanctuary reorganized its management team and named Mercuriadis CEO of the entire group for his substantial contribution in the global revenues overseas.[15][16]

During his tenure at Sanctuary Group, Mercuriadis oversaw the management of Destiny's Child, Beyoncé,[17] Nelly, Mick Fleetwood, Tommy Lee, The Who, and Robert Plant. He also managed the recordings of Megadeth,[18] Kiss, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Blue Nile, Simple Minds and Lou Reed. He was recognized for his creative marketing strategies, contributing to the success of Morrisey's Ringleader of the Tormentors -- a #1 album -- and You Are the Quarry, which hit #2. [19] He was also noted for the #1 success of "Changes" with Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne, "Elton John's Electricity", Antony and the Johnsons' Mercury Music Prize-winning I Am a Bird Now, and several #1 Iron Maiden albums. [20][21][22]

In 2005, Mercuriadis was featured on the cover of Billboard magazine with Elton John.[23] He also delivered the keynote speech at the Pollstar CIC awards in 2005.[24][25] In a 2017 article published by Music Business International Mercuriadis wrote: "Our job as managers isn’t to do what we want to do, it’s to do what the artist wants to do. Our job is to facilitate their vision for themselves and to help bring it to fruition." [6]

Mercuriadis resigned from Sanctuary Music Group on October 31, 2006, after 20 years of service. He continued to manage Guns N' Roses and Morrissey.[26][27] He worked with Guns N' Roses over several years, during which their much-anticipated and much-delayed album, Chinese Democracy, was released.[28][29] He also oversaw Morrissey albums including You Are the Quarry, First of the Gang to Die, Ringleader of the Tormentors, and Greatest Hits.[21][19][30] His work with Morrissey resulted in ten top 20 singles.[31]

Mercuriadis is the founder of Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited, a music IP investment company. In a 2019 interview with the journal Thought Economics, he stated: "I have always believed that hit songs and music, art in general, has real value to it. What people don’t really recognise is that when a song becomes a proven song, the earnings pattern to it becomes very predictable and reliable, and is therefore investable. And these songs are as valuable as gold, or oil."[32] He later said "In the music business, without the song we don’t exist – it’s the energy that makes the world go round." [33]

The company raised more than US$300 million to fund the acquisition of copyrights in June 2018, and began trading on the London Stock Exchange as SONG in July. Its first acquisition was a majority stake in The-Dream's 302-song catalogue, which included hits such as Justin Bieber's "Baby", Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" and Rihanna's "Umbrella." It has since acquired 100% of the Poo Bear, Tricky Stewart, TMS and Giorgio Tuinfort catalogues, as well as a stake in the catalogue of Chic co-founder Bernard Edwards.[34]

Hipgnosis Songs Fund has raised nearly £862 million to fund acquisitions since it was established in 2018.[35] At the close of its first full year as a publicly traded company, its catalogue totaled more than 5,000 songs; of those, approximately 2,000 had been #1 hits somewhere in the world, and 4,000 had reached the Top 10.[36] Five songs co-owned by Hipgnosis Songs Fund appeared in the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 of the decade chart.[37] In July 2020, it was reported that the Hipgnosis music rights portfolio, consisting of approximately 13,300 songs, had been independently valued at more than £760 million.[38][39] In August 2020 its market cap valuation exceeded £1BN; it reached £1.25 BN in December 2020. [40][41]

Hipgnosis Songs Fund submitted written evidence for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's December 2020 inquiry into the economics of streaming. In an interview with Music Week, Mercuriadis said: “Once they peel away the layers of that onion, what they’re going to get into is investigating the business practices of the major labels and the publishing companies that they own and control. The reason songwriters are not being paid what they should be getting paid is that the three biggest publishing companies are not advocating for songwriters, because they’re owned by the three biggest recorded music companies in the world.” [33]

As of January 2021, Hipgnosis Songs Fund partially or fully owned more than 57,000 songs. [5]