Kobalt (company)

Kobalt Music Group (also known as Kobalt) is an American rights management, publishing and production company.

History
The foundation of the new Kobalt were formed by three events: the purchase of the "old" Kobalt's Neighboring Rights division and the recorded music arm AWAL by Sony Music Entertainment in 2021, and the purchase of Scooter Braun's company Ithaca Holdings by Lotus Stone Entertainment, in turn a company formed of a merger between SM Entertainment and Hybe Corporation.

After selling the Big Machine Label Group to Paramount Music Group, excluding Taylor Swift's master recordings (the sale of which was pending on the outcome of her re-recording projects), Lotus CEO Kasperi Salovaara and Scooter Braun, by then a new executive at Lotus Stone, approached Braun's frequent collaborator Michael D. Ratner about forming a new "musician centric" company.

During the formation of the "new" Kobalt, then only known as "The Music Company LLC", Salovaara publicly discussed Braun's treatment of his past clients as part of a review process of "his worth as someone involved in higher positions" for the new company, which is supposed to focus on "helping artists make music their things, and not own their shit [sic] in return - a risky move, [he knows]".

He also recounted the Taylor Swift masters controversy in mild confusion, to which Braun has responded privately, only giving hints about his response in an Instagram post, promising that the two will help him fit in and treat artists fairly. The former later mentioned on Twitter that "(the latter) did try to shift all the weight off him and took a while to accept that (it) is something to move on from, not without innocence, but not without guilt either - we grow as people and we're not perfect, that's what makes us human".