Warner Chappell Music

Warner Chappell Music is an American music publishing company and a subsidiary of Warner Music Group (WMG), headquartered in New York City. It is one of the three largest music publishers in the world alongside Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Publishing, representing a catalog of over 1.4 million compositions and more than 150,000 songwriters and composers, with offices in over 40 countries. Warner Chappell administers works spanning virtually every genre of popular and classical music, including the catalogs of Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, David Bowie, and many others. The company was formed in 1987 when Warner Communications acquired Chappell & Co. from PolyGram for $275 million and merged it with its existing publishing holdings.

History

Chappell & Co.: Origins (1811–1925)

The deep root of Warner Chappell's history lies in Chappell & Co., founded on January 1, 1811, on Bond Street, London, by pianist Samuel Chappell in partnership with music professors Francis Tatton Latour and Johann Baptist Cramer. The firm opened as a combined sheet music retailer and musical instrument shop, quickly establishing a reputation as one of London's premier music publishers. By 1819, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote to a colleague that Chappell was "one of the best publishers" in London. The company expanded under Samuel's son Thomas Patey Chappell (1819–1902), who focused the firm on musical theater publishing — a specialty that remained central to its identity for over a century — and secured the publishing rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and the music of Arthur Sullivan, as well as Charles Gounod's Faust and Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl. Thomas was a founding member of the Music Publishers Association and served as its first chairman from 1881 to 1900. He also co-sponsored the Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts at St. James's Hall, which ran from 1859 to 1901. The firm began manufacturing pianos in the 1840s and by the twentieth century was one of the leading piano manufacturers in Britain as well as a dominant music publisher.

The Dreyfus Era and American Expansion (1926–1983)

In 1926, American brothers Max Dreyfus and Louis Dreyfus — already prominent New York music publishers through their control of T. B. Harms & Co. — purchased a controlling interest in Chappell & Co. Max Dreyfus was one of the most powerful figures in the American music publishing industry, having signed and developed the careers of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Caesar, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, among others. Under the Dreyfus brothers, Chappell became the dominant publisher of the Great American Songbook and of Broadway musical theater. On May 15, 1964, three days after Max Dreyfus died in the United States, a fire destroyed the London building on Bond Street, devastating the archives and deeply affecting Louis Dreyfus, who was present. The premises were subsequently rebuilt. In 1975, Chappell acquired the American music publisher Hill & Range. The Chappell publishing business was eventually acquired by PolyGram, while the Chappell retail and instrument business on Bond Street was sold separately to Kemble Pianos, which continued to operate the store under the Chappell of Bond Street name.

Warner Bros. Publishing Holdings (1929–1986)

Parallel to the Chappell lineage, Warner Bros. Pictures president Jack L. Warner established the Music Publishers Holding Company (MPHC) in 1929, acquiring three major Tin Pan Alley publishers — M. Witmark & Sons, Remick Music Corporation, and T. B. Harms, Inc. — as a means of securing song copyrights for use in films inexpensively. The Witmark, Remick, and Harms catalogs contained vast quantities of American popular song, and they formed the nucleus of what would eventually become the Warner publishing empire. Additional acquisitions followed over subsequent decades, including Tamerlane Music (affiliated with Valiant Records) in 1969.

Formation of Warner Chappell (1987)

In 1984, PolyGram sold Chappell & Co. to a group of private investors that included music executive Freddy Bienstock, who moved the company's head office from London to New York. In 1987, Warner Communications — then parent of Warner Music Group — purchased Chappell from those investors for $275 million and merged it with its existing publishing holdings, including the MPHC catalog, under the name Warner/Chappell Music. The deal was led by Warner Communications chairman Chuck Kaye. The combined entity became one of the world's two or three largest music publishers overnight, uniting the Great American Songbook holdings of the Dreyfus-era Chappell with Warner's Tin Pan Alley acquisitions. In 1990, Warner Chappell became a subsidiary of Time Warner following Warner Communications' merger with Time Inc.

Acquisitions and Growth (1988–2005)

Warner Chappell grew rapidly through a series of targeted acquisitions in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, the company acquired the Birch Tree Group (formerly Summy-Birchard), publisher of "Happy Birthday to You" — one of the most performed songs in the English language — as well as the Frances Clark piano method books. In 1990, Warner Chappell acquired Mighty Three Music, the publishing catalog of Philadelphia soul architects Thom Bell and the Gamble and Huff team, adding a foundational body of 1970s R&B songwriting. The same year, Canadian publisher Gordon V. Thompson Music was acquired. In 1994, Warner Chappell's print music arm, Warner Bros. Publications, expanded by acquiring CPP/Belwin, formerly the print music division of Columbia Pictures, making WCM the world's largest owner of song copyrights and largest publisher of printed sheet music at the time. In 2005, Warner Chappell sold the bulk of its printed music division — Warner Bros. Publications — to Alfred Publishing, exiting the sheet music printing business to focus entirely on licensing and rights administration. In 2006, the company launched the Pan European Digital Licensing (P.E.D.L.) initiative to streamline digital rights clearances across Europe.

Catalog Acquisitions (2019–Present)

Warner Chappell has continued to grow its catalog through major acquisitions in the streaming era. In May 2019, the company acquired the Gene Autry Music Group, comprising four music publishers and approximately 1,500 compositions including "Back in the Saddle Again" and "Here Comes Santa Claus." In January 2022, Warner Chappell announced the acquisition of the late David Bowie's publishing catalog from his estate for a reported figure upward of $250 million, one of the largest catalog deals in music publishing history. The same month, the company signed a worldwide publishing agreement with ABS-CBN Music of the Philippines, home to the largest catalog of Original Pilipino Music (OPM). In January 2025, Warner Chappell completed an acquisition of DWA Records, further expanding its holdings.

Leadership

Warner Chappell has been led by a series of prominent publishing executives. Guy Hands and David Renzer oversaw the company during the Time Warner and early Bronfman eras respectively. Jon Platt, a highly regarded A&R and publishing executive, served as CEO from 2017, alongside COO and later co-chair Carianne Marshall. Platt departed in 2023 and Marshall was elevated to chair.

Catalog Highlights

Songwriter / Composer	Notable Works
George Gershwin	Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, "Summertime"
Jerome Kern	"Ol' Man River," Show Boat
Cole Porter	"Night and Day," "Anything Goes," "I've Got You Under My Skin"
Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart	"My Funny Valentine," "Blue Moon," "The Lady Is a Tramp"
Gamble and Huff / Thom Bell	Philadelphia soul catalog; The O'Jays, The Spinners, Harold Melvin
David Bowie	Full songwriting catalog; acquired 2022
Gene Autry	"Back in the Saddle Again," "Here Comes Santa Claus"; acquired 2019
Mildred and Patty Hill	"Happy Birthday to You"; acquired via Birch Tree Group 1988