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PART I
Item 1.Business
Our Company
Reservoir Media, Inc., together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries (the “Company”, “we”, “our”, “us” and “Reservoir”), is one of the world’s leading independent music companies. Reservoir is a top 10 music publisher by global revenue according to Billboard. We are award-winning and were twice named Publisher of the Year by the Music Business Worldwide’s A&R Awards and twice named Independent Publisher of the Year at the Music Week Awards, most recently in 2022. In addition, our Founder and CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi was named Executive of the Year at the 2022 Billboard Women In Music Awards. We operate a music publishing business, a record label business, a management business and a rights management entity in the Middle East.
We have two operating and reportable segments—Music Publishing and Recorded Music. Our Music Publishing business contributed approximately $77.1 million to our revenues for the year ended March 31, 2022, representing approximately 71% of our revenues. We now represent over 140,000 copyrights with titles dating back as far as the early 1900s and hundreds of #1 releases worldwide. Music is at the heart of everything we do and, as such, our M&A practice and our active songwriter business is committed to both catalog acquisition and strategic expansion of the roster.
Our publishing catalog includes historic compositions written and performed by greats like Joni Mitchell, The Isley Brothers, Billy Strayhorn, Hoagy Carmichael, and John Denver. Our roster of active songwriters, including James Fauntleroy, Ali Tamposi, Jamie Hartman and Oak Felder have contributed to current award-winning hits performed by the likes of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, BTS, Drake, and more.
Our Recorded Music business contributed approximately $29.5 million to our revenues for the year ended March 31, 2022, representing approximately 27% of our revenues. We look at our Recorded Music business as one that is poised for growth and ingestion of new master recordings through our M&A practice.
Our Recorded Music business is home to Chrysalis Records and Philly Groove Records representing artists like The Delfonics, Sinead O’Connor and Generation X, as well as recordings under the Tommy Boy record label, which we acquired in June 2021, including artists such as De La Soul, Coolio, House of Pain, Naughty By Nature, and Queen Latifah..
We are operating in an industry benefitting from sector tailwinds attributed to growth in global paid subscriptions to digital service providers, increased penetration of in-home voice activated devices, in-home fitness products, wi-fi enabled vehicles and the ongoing proliferation of new novel access points like video gaming and social media. As connectivity and mobile phone usage increase, people are listening to more music, more often, and in more places. More music is being created, too, as the tools to make and distribute music, which were at one time expensive and limited, are now free and accessible to creators of all levels. As a result, global music companies and music rightsholders are more valuable than ever.
We excel in the independent sector because of our value enhancement practice. Our unparalleled creative team, alongside our exceptional synchronization and marketing teams, sources and signs songwriters and artists to our active roster, which creates new opportunities for the existing catalog of copyrights. Our outstanding M&A practice contributes to the growth of our business by identifying potential acquisition targets and pursuing those that are complementary to our business.
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