Warner Music Group (WMG) has acquired Zebralution Music from Bookwire, returning the German independent music distributor to its former owner. The price was not disclosed, and Zebralution’s co-managing directors will remain in place.
WMG announced the purchase on November 3. Berlin-based Zebralution distributes independent labels in Germany and across Europe; Bookwire is a digital publishing company based in Frankfurt.
How Zebralution changed hands
Warner took a majority stake in Zebralution in 2007. In April 2017, its Central Europe division agreed to sell the company to an independent music consortium as part of divestments WMG arranged with Merlin and the European independent music trade association IMPALA after buying Parlophone Label Group in 2013.
The buyers were Christof Ellinghaus of City Slang; Konrad von Löhneysen, owner of Embassy of Music; and Zebralution’s original founders, Kurt Thielen and Sascha Lazimbat.
German collecting society GEMA acquired a majority stake in December 2019 and later became Zebralution’s sole shareholder. In January of this year, New York-based Insight Partners agreed to buy it. Insight controls Bookwire through the UK’s Delta Software Group and integrated Zebralution into Bookwire when the purchase closed in March.
Bookwire retained the audiobook and digital publishing businesses. In April, it announced that the music distribution business would become a separate company, Zebralution Music.
Insight also invested in DistroKid in 2021 in a deal that valued the platform at 1,300 million dollars. In July, CVC Capital Partners agreed to take a majority stake in DistroKid, while Insight retained a significant minority stake.
Management and technology
Co-managing directors and co-founders von Löhneysen and Lazimbat will continue to lead Zebralution Music’s distribution business. They will work closely with Niels Walboomers, president of Warner Music Central Europe, to align strategic operations.
“It’s an exciting new chapter for Zebralution Music, but for our label partners and the people we work with every day, everything will remain the same,” Lazimbat said. Von Löhneysen said that was “easy to say” in his case because his label, Embassy of Music, has been a client for more than 20 years and will remain one.
Zebralution’s labels will gain direct access to the distribution, analytics and financial tools of Revelator, which Warner acquired in April as part of an expansion of its distribution and label services. “What changes is the technology and the additional resources we now have available,” Lazimbat said.
Walboomers credited the two executives with building “one of the most trusted homes for independent music in Europe.” He said Zebralution’s regional expertise, combined with Warner’s technology and global reach, would give partners “first-rate capabilities without asking them to give up their independence.”
John Ruhrmann, Bookwire’s chief executive and co-founder, said it was “especially fitting” for Zebralution Music to return “in a sense, to a former home.”
Independent sector response
When Warner acquired Revelator in April, IMPALA said “the independent ecosystem loses another piece of its infrastructure” and called the trend “bad news for artists, fans and Europe’s diversity as a whole.” No response from IMPALA to the Zebralution Music acquisition has been reported.
