{"id":350642,"date":"2025-08-17T02:51:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T02:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/350642\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T02:51:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T02:51:25","slug":"how-ftse-100-fund-manager-mg-engineered-a-smash-hit-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/350642\/","title":{"rendered":"How FTSE 100 fund manager M&G engineered a smash-hit song"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Shaboozey counts one to five on his fingers in his Billboard-topping hit A Bar Song (Tipsy), more than four million savers with the FTSE 100 fund manager M&G should be singing along.<\/p>\n

The American singer, who belted out a rendition of the earworm to crowds at Glastonbury this year, spent a record-breaking 19 weeks at No 1 with the song last summer.<\/p>\n

The three-minute track about downing double shots of whisky is punctuated with Shaboozey\u2019s distinctive counting rhyme, which is based \u2014 \u201cinterpolated\u201d, in music industry jargon \u2014 on a 2004 hit by the American rapper J-Kwon. That earlier song is owned by a company belonging to M&G and, in a bizarre twist, this encouraged Shaboozey to borrow from it. <\/p>\n

M&G\u2019s role in Shaboozey\u2019s success is down to a business called Seeker Music, which the fund manager set up in 2020 with a view to investing in the music industry. <\/p>\n

The Californian-based business buys music catalogues to receive revenue when the songs are replayed. Among its top 20 revenue producers are Joan Jett\u2019s I Love Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll, Justin Bieber\u2019s Ghost and Lewis Capaldi\u2019s Before You Go. Seeker also bought a catalogue of songs by the two writers of J-Kwon\u2019s Tipsy. <\/p>\n

Seeker also has a strategy of finding ways to \u201cflip\u201d, or interpolate, songs into formats modern audiences would prefer. <\/p>\n

\"Lewis<\/p>\n

Lewis Capaldi is one of the top revenue producers for M&G\u2019s Seeker Music<\/p>\n

JASON KEMPIN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Evan Bogart, Seeker\u2019s chief executive, himself a successful songwriter behind hits for Beyonc\u00e9 and Rihanna, explained that this is where Tipsy comes in. <\/p>\n

He remembers loving J-Kwon\u2019s tune 20 years ago. \u201cWhen that song came on in the clubs, people just lost their minds, at least in Los Angeles,\u201d said Bogart, 47.<\/p>\n

M&G deliberately sought him out when it decided to look for ways to invest in the music industry. He is from a family of musical royalty, his late dad Neil being the brains behind Casablanca Records, which signed the likes of Donna Summer and Village People, and his mum the manager of Kiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our goals back in 2020, when the company first started, was to become the premier catalogue company for \u2018flipping\u2019 songs \u2014 for reimagining songs in today\u2019s world,\u201d said Bogart.<\/p>\n

Tipsy is an example of what Bogart \u2014 and M&G \u2014 had in mind. Seeker Music approached Shaboozey, who appeared on Beyonce\u2019s Cowboy Carter<\/a> album, and his writers to start \u201cpitching ideas from our catalogue to interpolate for Shaboozey\u2019s album\u201d, as Bogart put it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey gravitated towards Tipsy,\u201d said Bogart, as he tunefully sang the one-to-five counting passage to demonstrate what had been \u2018flipped\u2019. (He is particularly keen on the drum section in the J-Kwon version.) \u201c[Within two months] they reimagined it into this country hit, this monster hit. It is pretty miraculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Beyonc\u00e9<\/p>\n

Shaboozey appeared at the \u201cBeyonc\u00e9 Bowl\u201d, the NFL 2024 Christmas Day halftime show in Houston, Texas<\/p>\n

GREG NOIRE<\/p>\n

M&G could have achieved exposure to the music industry by investing in funds such as Hipgnosis Songs Fund, founded by Merck Mercuriadis and Nile Rodgers, which used to be listed in London but has since been taken private by the private equity firm Blackstone<\/a>; or Round Hill Music, which was also listed in London until two years ago; or other private equity firms such as Lyric Capital Group. <\/p>\n

But M&G decided it could generate better returns by setting up on its own, because of the scale of the potential investments that it could make. Technically, Seeker Music is majority owned by M&G\u2019s \u00a3128 billion with-profits fund, which in turn is owned by its four million policyholders. These include the 500,000 retail customers who save with the PruFund, often to put money by for their retirement. The rest is owned by M&G\u2019s big institutional clients, such as pension funds.<\/p>\n

\"Shaboozey<\/p>\n

Shaboozey and J-Kwon perform together in Los Angeles last year. A 2004 hit for the rapper was \u201cflipped\u201d for A Bar Song (Tipsy)<\/p>\n

KEVIN WINTER\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Music royalties \u2014 which are received as songs are replayed<\/a>, downloaded or used in films or in adverts \u2014 are regarded as a steady income stream that can help to meet the future needs of savers. <\/p>\n

Ciaran Mulligan, chief investment officer at M&G\u2019s life insurance arm, said owning Seeker Music provided two sources of income. \u201cIt\u2019s the regular income from the royalties when people download songs. That obviously generates a revenue stream, which the Seeker company gets,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s also the creativity that\u2019s involved in the company where they own songs and the royalties of that. If they slice and dice and take a little part of one song, and then define that as a new song, that generates a new income stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

M&G\u2019s life business also uses this model to own stakes in other businesses, such as Sky aircraft leasing. It means, too, that the company\u2019s investors stand to make profits should the companies be sold.<\/p>\n

The fund manager reckons that Seeker has bought up $300 million (\u00a3220 million) worth of music royalties, with 17,000 copyrights and master records that generate revenue of more than \u00a317 million a year. It previously said it was targeting a mid-teen internal rate of return \u2014 a measure of profitability \u2014 from its investment by the time it makes its exit.<\/p>\n

Seeker Music would not disclose how much it was receiving from A Bar Song (Tipsy), for which it has \u201cfractional ownership\u201d with the new writers. Bogart admitted that he \u201cfell off his seat\u201d the first time he heard it, but reckoned he could repeat the success.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Seeker Music\u2019s Evan Bogart said of the J-Kwon \u201cinterpolation\u201d: \u201cThey reimagined it into this country hit, this monster hit. It is pretty miraculous\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have carefully constructed yearly [key performance indicators] and targets. It\u2019s a weird thing to say that we\u2019re trying to have all this creative success but we measure ourselves through finance. But that\u2019s the business we\u2019ve created.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Bar Song (Tipsy) will take some beating. It has racked up 1.4 billion streams on Spotify and is now into its 69th week in the Billboard charts \u2014 although it has slipped to No10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Shaboozey counts one to five on his fingers in his Billboard-topping hit A Bar Song (Tipsy), more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-350642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115041841183912132","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}