Houlihan Lokey Advises Beatport

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Beatport, LLC, has acquired Loopmasters Ltd. in conjunction with the successful placement of a senior secured credit facility. Proceeds were used to finance the acquisition as well as pay related fees and expenses. The transactions closed on December 17, 2020.

Beatport is the leading B2B provider of electronic dance music to approximately 500,000 DJs globally. The company offers a comprehensive, cloud-based library of approximately 11 million commercially licensed songs across more than 75,000 content suppliers and 36 genres and has been the go-to source for producers, DJs, performers, and their fans to share and discover new music for more than 15 years. Beatport also offers robust, cloud-enabled library management and performance technology that integrate directly with all leading DJ hardware and bring streaming to the DJ booth for the first time.

Loopmasters, based in the U.K., operates two divisions: Loopmasters and Plugin Boutique. Loopmasters offers a vast selection of royalty-free sample packs, loops, and short audio clips in a large variety of genres and formats. Plugin Boutique is the leading marketplace for virtual studio technology (VST), offering virtual instruments, synthesizer presets, and software plug-ins that simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software, which allows producers to create music outside of the traditional studio setting. The combination of Beatport and Loopmasters will create the dominant electronic music platform that offers a highly complementary, end-to-end solution covering music creation, production, distribution, and library management for all DJ verticals.

Houlihan Lokey and Beatport have had a long-standing relationship, and Houlihan Lokey has advised LiveStyle, Inc., Beatport’s parent, on multiple transactions over the last several years. After strategic review and owing to its in-depth knowledge of Beatport’s business, the firm recognized the highly strategic nature of the Loopmasters acquisition opportunity, enabling efficient marketing and execution. In order to meet the expedited M&A timeline required by Loopmasters, Houlihan Lokey ran an accelerated financing process in which debt commitments sufficient to complete the acquisition were secured approximately four weeks after contacting lenders, despite the company’s niche sector and market uncertainties due to COVID-19. The transactions highlight Houlihan Lokey’s ability to provide creative, efficient, and comprehensive solutions for its clients through cross-group and cross-product coordination and exemplify its cross-border execution capabilities.

Houlihan Lokey served as Beatport’s exclusive financial advisor for the acquisition and exclusive placement agent for the financing, assisting the company in marketing, arranging, structuring, and negotiating the transactions.