Ropes & Gray advises on TPG investment into Musixmatch

Ropes & Gray has advised TPG, a leading global alternative asset management firm, on its investment into Musixmatch, a leading global music data platform.

Founded in 2010 in Italy, Musixmatch features the world’s largest lyrics metadata collection, enhanced by additional metadata across 80+ languages, which it provides to digital service providers including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google, Instagram, Spotify, and Tidal. The content is generated and continuously updated by a global community of more than 20 million curators, a sophisticated artificial intelligence / machine learning technology stack, a network of more than a million verified artists, and a team of in-house trained quality assurance specialists. The company has relationships with more than 100,000 music publishers globally, including BMG, Kobalt, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing, and Warner Chappel.

TPG is making its investment through TPG Growth, the firm’s middle market and growth equity platform. The partnership with TPG advances Musixmatch’s mission to provide lyrical content, tools, enriched metadata, and services to a growing community, while expanding its offerings internationally and in new verticals.

The Ropes & Gray team was led by private equity transactions partners John Newton and Vicky McGrath and counsel Shona Ha (London) and partners Jason Freedman (San Francisco) and Kate Withers (New York). Other members of the team included: partners Andrew Howard (tax), Matt Jones (executive compensation & employee benefits) and Edward Sadtler (IP & TMT), counsel Evan Gourvitz (IP & TMT), and Steven Kaye (litigation), associates Padraic Daly, Eamon Gallagher, Phoebe Glenister-So, Bethany Hickey, Michael Meyers, Joshua Nicholson, Charlie Shephard and Hayley Stokes (private equity transactions), Joshua Jackson (IP), Michael Gauvin, Dalton Busch and Joe Muller (corporate) and Benjamin Wonnacott (tax) and paralegals Lucy Ing and Hailey Lovett.