Warner Music has acquired Halley Records, the independent Catalan label founded in 2015 whose roster includes Oques Grasses, Figa Flawas, Maria Jaume, Triquell, Suu, Ginestà, La Fúmiga, Buhos, Els Catarres, Els Amics de les Arts and Lildami.
“The catalogue goes on belonging to Halley Records,” says co-founder Marc Isern. The label works on a licensing model that leaves ownership of the masters with the artists. Isern, Ixent Sampietro and Maria Blay, who founded it together, say the deal should serve to “widen the joint structure, pool resources, knowledge and new tools” without “giving up the closeness, the trust and the way of understanding relationships with artists”. The quotes are translated from Catalan.
The trading name stays, but the company Halley Records SL is renamed Cosmic Sound SL.
This is not the first business in Sampietro’s orbit to end up inside Warner. Promoter The Project — which programmes the Festival Jazz Barcelona and runs a good share of the city’s larger concerts — joined the holdings of Èxits Management & Productions, also run by him, in 2023, and Warner bought it outright in 2024. Halley say that precedent “organically endorsed” their own move.
Warner Music Iberia, the Spanish and Portuguese arm, has just come under the presidency of Andrés Rothschild. Nothing has been said about the price of the deal.
Text by Sílvia Comellas