Symphonic to Pay Beatport’s “Trapped” Royalties in Advance

In case you haven’t heard the news, Beatport has frozen payments to suppliers (including distributors, direct record labels, etc.) due to the current delays its parent company, SFX Entertainment, Inc., is having in taking the company from being a publicly traded company to a private one.

A message sent to Symphonic Distribution late on Tuesday evening stated:

“Since inception over 10 years ago Beatport has paid almost $200,000,000 to its label partners. Beatport’s parent company, SFX, is currently involved in a ‘going private’ process that has trapped certain earned label payments. This process will be coming to an end in the next few weeks, at which time all payments will be able to be made. Beatport prides itself on being the broadest and original friend of the makers of electronic music and will clear this one time obstacle very shortly. In the meantime, feel free to contact your label manager with any questions. Thank you for your patience and continued support.”

Being that Beatport is a large portion of revenue for many of the talented record labels and artists we deal with, this specific time, we wanted to be swift in our decision that we will not withhold this payment and its royalty data to our clients. The Q215 report, slated to be posted on August 15th, will include the Beatport royalty data as well as full payment and we will work directly with Beatport to obtain the royalties in due time.

We’re confident that Beatport and its parent company will resolve the matter in the timeline specified in their message and that this situation is unique and specific to the complexities involved with moving from a publicly traded company to a private one.

We very much value the hard work and talent displayed by our record labels and artists and Symphonic Distribution has worked hard to make provisions for situations such as this, and for this specific time, we wanted to ensure that our record labels and artists were to be paid as expected despite the short notice.