Protest Folk Magazine: 2025

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Rounder Records's Concord Music Group-Michigan Retirement System-Israeli Connection

In the 21st-century, most folk music fans who listen to the copyrighted music that was historically recorded on the Rounder Records label, of the Concord Music Group global music industry firm, don't think it's morally right for the owner of the Rounder Records label to--in violation of BDS campaign's demands--be purchasing State of Israel Bonds.

Yet in October 2023, the Michigan Retirement System state employee pension fund--which, as of 2019, owned 93 percent of the Concord Music Group that owns Rounder Records--purchased $10 million worth of State of Israel Bonds--in violation of the BDS campaign's demands.

And most folk music fans of the 1970s who then, historically, purchased some of the vinyl albums of folk music recorded or distributed by the then-Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Rounder Records may have assumed, historically, that Rounder Records was a non-commercially-oriented folk music firm. After all, in its initial mission statement, Rounder Records had characterized itself as "an anti-profit collective."

But, as David Menconi noted in a book, titled Oh, Didn't They Ramble, which the University of North Carolina Press published in 2023:

"In 1971...Rounder...opted to incorporate...The Rounders asked [Bruce] Kaplan to join their collective...He came from a family of some means (son of a high-ranking Zenith Electronics executive), which meant he had the money to fund recording projects that were out of the Rounders' reach...

"Kaplan left in 1972 and formed Flying Fish Records that year--distributed in part by Rounder Distributors...In the 1990s, following Kaplan's...death at the age of 47, Rounder acquired the Flying Fish catalog..."

And by 2000, "Rounder had grown over 3 decades to...holdings of almost $17 million in assets, with annual revenue of $30 million," according to the same book.

Then, despite Rounder Records's founders claiming in their initial mission statement, historically, that Rounder Records was going to be recording and distributing folk music records as "an anti-profit collective," by the beginning of the second decade of the 21st-century, some of Rounder Records's surviving founding members apparently pocketed a lot more money by selling Rounder Records to the then-Nashville, TN-based, for-profit, Concord Music Group corporate media firm. As David Menconi also recalled in his 2023-published Oh, Didn't He Ramble book:

"Concord had started out as a...label...that Rounder Distribution carried. The company evolved...through...mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships. Concord Music Group bought a number of labels and publishing catalogs including Fantasy Records...known for...Creedence Clearwater Revival. Another milestone was Hear Music, a partnership with...Starbucks Coffee Company...

"In April 2010 came...announcement that Rounder Records was...latest addition to Concord's holdings, in a...purchase that would become final in 2013...Purchase price...might not have been as much as the $80 million Concord paid for Fantasy Records in 2004. [But] It was at least enough to make for a comfortable retirement for the Rounder founders...

"Rounder's...founders...had left Cambridge in 2007...moving the operation...Concord moved Rounder headquarters to Nashville to run it alongside the rest of the Concord Music Group.

"Concord...continued merger and acquisitions...By 2020, Rounders was but one of 7 labels in the Concord Music Group, alongside Fantasy, Loma Vista, Fearless, Craft, Kidz Bob, and Concord Records. It was a huge enterprise with more than 600 employees and...holdings including a theatrical division as well as the music catalogs of former Rounder competitors Sugar Hill and Vanguard Records. Annual revenues were north of $400 million...Concord's majority owner was the Michigan Retirement System's state employee pension fund..."

And by 2019, $1.1 billion of the Michigan Retirement System's state employee pension fund's investment portfolio of $61.5 billion had been invested in the Concord Music Group.

In 2025, according to the Concord Music Group's website, besides owning the Rounder Records, Vanguard Records and Sugar Hill music catalogs, the Michigan Retirement System-owned Concord Music Group currently owns the music catalogs of 13 other folk, pop, or classical music catalog labels (including Riverside, Prestige, Sax and Boosey & Hawkes); and its Concord Theatrical division now controls the catalogs of Rogers & Hammerstein Theatricals, Samuel French, and Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, while its Concord Music Publishing division owns or administers (for profit) 1 million published music copyrights.