Etsy has inked a Reverb sale agreement with Creator Partners and Servco. Photo Credit: Oberon Copeland
Reverb reached out with a formal announcement about its sale – and its return to private ownership – this morning. Meanwhile, Etsy confirmed the divestment in a regulatory disclosure, chalking up the move to a “focus on driving growth in the core Etsy marketplace.”
The seller, which previously acknowledged “significant GMS [gross merchandise sales] headwinds in 2024,” also noted that it would provide additional information in its Q1 2025 earnings report. Having reportedly paid $275 million for Reverb, Etsy is scheduled to release the first-quarter performance breakdown on the 30th.
Shifting to Reverb’s buyers, the mentioned Creator Partners was founded in 2022 by former SoundCloud head Kerry Trainor, a longtime Fender board member who, in keeping with another of his company’s investments, joined BMI’s own board towards the top of 2024.
Fellow SoundCloud vets including Jaydan Heather Malsky are also aboard as Creator Partner execs.
The more than century-old Servco, for its part, touts itself as “Hawaii’s largest private company,” with operations in the automotive sector as well as venture capital. On the VC front, Servco possesses an ownership stake in Fender, which is said to represent its “largest investment to date.”
Notwithstanding the buyers’ Fender holdings, Reverb went ahead and pledged not to provide preferential treatment to the instruments giant. Plus, the marketplace signaled that it would continue operating independently with its existing team in place; a straight merger into Creator Partners isn’t forthcoming, per Reverb.
“We’ve got a lot of exciting changes in the works,” Reverb CEO David Mandelbrot elaborated in part. “We’re expanding access to music-making software on Reverb and we’re getting ready to pilot a new option for selling that allows musicians to get paid faster, while skipping the listing and shipping process.
“Our teams are working on improving our search functionality, making it easier to ship, and shortening the time it takes to resolve support issues,” the former Indiegogo CEO proceeded.
Those remarks appear to indicate that Mandelbrot will remain aboard Reverb, which he’s led since early 2020. And the marketplace, which declined to provide sale-price details to DMN, expects the transaction to close “in the coming months.”
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Etsy Announces Reverb Sale to Creator Partners and Servco – Digital Music News
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