In 2019, Norwegian DJ Kygo jumped at the opportunity to remix a lost Whitney Houston track, a cover of the Steve Winwood hit “Higher Love.” His spin on the song climbed the charts, giving the late pop star her first Hot 100 hit since her death in 2012. For Pat Houston, her sister-in-law and executor, it was a labor of love, but for Primary Wave Music, the industry player that helped arrange the collaboration, it was a sign that their vision for the future of the music industry could really work.
Founded in 2006 by Larry Mestel as a music publishing company, Primary Wave eventually grew into a full-service management agency with a roster of current artists and an extensive back catalog of famous songs they want to try to introduce to new audiences. When iconic artists like Stevie Nicks and Burt Bacharach made headlines recently for sweeping publishing deals, it was Primary Wave who acquired those rights.
The back catalog deals—which have seen Bob Dylan and Neil Young selling all or part of their catalogs to other companies—represent the music industry’s latest pivot to a new revenue stream, as the pandemic continues to cancel tours, and streaming services take their well-documented bite out of record sales. It means audiences will be more likely to hear classic songs feature in major ad campaigns and see more movies like Bohemian Rhapsody or Yesterday and jukebox musicals like Jagged Little Pill that draw on a collection of a classic artist’s work.
On Wednesday, Primary Wave indicated their commitment to back catalogs by announcing the hiring of Natalia Nastaskin, one of the music industry’s most powerful female executives. She’ll join as a partner and chief content officer, where she will develop new projects that take advantage of Primary Wave’s catalog.
“I thought if I was ever going to make a career change, now is the time,” Nastaskin said in a recent interview, adding that the pandemic prompted her to think about “potential catalog sale opportunities for our clients who were not able to go on the road.” Nastaskin spoke to Vanity Fair about her new role, what it means for a company to take on the job of administering a catalog, and how it works for artists and audiences.
Vanity Fair: When we talk about a musician’s publishing catalog, what does that look like? What role does Primary Wave take on when they purchase a catalog?
Natalia Nastaskin: When you’re working with catalogs—as we’re calling them, but they’re actually collections of copyrights—they’re living and breathing organisms. I’m such a huge avid music fan, so when I think about catalogs and copyrights and songs that were created by Stevie Nicks and Whitney Houston and Olivia Newton-John, I see so many opportunities, whether it’s streaming or podcasts or television series, both within the music industry and outside of it. So many entertainment and media outlets can be helpful in promoting, marketing, and expanding the audience for those songs and those copyrights. It’s so interesting and it’s so compelling, and there’s just so much more to it than typical, standard royalties. It’s the creativity around those things.
To the extent that I was already across deals of that sort at UTA Music, it’s just a natural fit to be able to bring all of that inside of Primary Wave and work together with the team to continue to develop and enhance the copyrights and the songs—and expand audiences. Because that’s the really fun part: how do you take a legendary catalog and convert it to resonate with a younger audience? We saw it with TikTok and “Dreams,” the Fleetwood Mac–performed and Stevie Nicks–written song. What an extraordinary opportunity from taking that then into advertising and potentially scripted projects and potentially theatrical performances. You never know what might hit the zeitgeist. Once it does, it just blossoms into this wonderful universe of creativity and opportunity.
How do you think about balancing that organic energy with having a set body of work that you’re trying to promote?
It’s important to understand where the initial fit is. Some compositions may be very appropriate for theater, while others are not. We saw that with Jersey Boys, for example. What an extraordinary odyssey for those songs and those artists and the history of that segment of music, and how it then ended up reaching so many new audiences because parents were taking their kids to see the show, then [the songs] became available on streaming services. I think it’s important to understand which songs fit where. Some songs lend themselves to the podcast medium and some don’t. Some songs have intriguing stories about the ways they came together. Others are a lot more straightforward—it’s just work in the studio. The reality is, I think, different songs fit into different media beautifully.
So even though Primary Wave has been around since 2006, why do you think catalog acquisition is becoming the new boom industry now? Why is this the moment when the idea translates to investors and to others in the music industry?
The fact that we have so many new players entering the streaming market, that’s really important. Obviously the introduction of Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, all of that adds to the profitability of the digital sector when it comes to generating revenue. Not all the numbers have been reported for 2020, but I’m sure we’re going to see tremendous growth of revenue from the digital sector, while the more traditional areas like restaurants, nightclubs, and venues, bars, and clubs, those are obviously going to fall off in 2020 because of the public-gathering bans and the pandemic effects.