$1B sale puts Marshall Amps in Corporate Hands
Marshall Amps and the Marshall Group just sold for $1.16 billion, and the new owners aren’t exactly known for their involvement in music. Could this be the beginning of the end of real quality for the legendary amp brand as we know it?
$1B sale puts Marshall Amps in Corporate Hands
by Bobby Owsinski from Music 3.0
Do you ever feel that the world is being taken over by hedge funds and large corporations, giving you a faceless experience by wiping out the small stores and manufacturers that once gave you personalized service? Yeah, it’s happening everywhere, but the last place anyone ever thought it would happen was in the music gear business that’s been dominated by boutique manufacturers for so long. The latest almost unbelievable sale is China’s HongShan Capital Group (HSG) entering into an agreement to acquire a majority stake in The Marshall Group, maker of the iconic (and loud) amplifies,in a deal worth around $1.16 billion USD.
If you recall, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Marshall family entered into an agreement with Stockholm-headquartered Zound Industries to form the Marshall Group, with the Marshall family becoming the largest shareholders. Zound’s investors included Swedish telecom Telia, private equity firms Altor and Time for Growth, and venture capital firm Zenith, so you can see that there’s a lot of non-music money involved.
The Company Is Huge
According to its website, HSG has over 1,500 companies in its portfolio, although the only other company that has anything to do with music Bytedance, which owns TikTok. Yes, that TikTok that’s being threatened with banning by the U.S. government.
How many times have we seen this happen in the past when a large corporation takes over a music-oriented company with a loyal following only to have that company slowly disappear over time. Even if it survives it becomes a shell of itself.
It’s now commonplace for companies like InMusic, Music Tribe, Audiotonix, and Harmon sweep up smaller mature companies, and in most cases those smaller companies suffer as a result.
One of the few times this has worked out is in the case of Audiotonix, which owns Solid State Logic, Harrison Consoles, Slate Digital, Sound Devices, Calrec, Allen & Heath and a few others. Each of these companies have managed to keep their identities and have even grown, but this is one of the exceptions.
But you have to worry when an iconic manufacturer is swept up by such a huge company that has almost no other interests in music, especially music gear. Their goal is profits and stock price, not customer satisfaction and good sounds. This might be a good time to run out and buy a Marshall amp as an investment, because they might be looking and sounding different before too long.
Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, podcaster and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, music AI, the music business and social media.
