Warner Music Group acquires hip-hop media platform HipHopDX – Music Business Worldwide

Warner Music Group is a major music company – but it’s now also a serious online media publisher too, with a mini-portfolio of brands.

You may recall that in August 2018, WMG acquired UPROXX – a youth culture-focused news and content platform with an online audience of over 40m people.

Now, MBW can reveal that WMG has acquired another significant digital media outlet: hip-hop news, reviews and commentary site HipHopDX.

Our sources tell us that the buyout was finalized in April this year.

In addition to its own vast online audience, Los Angeles-based HipHopDX has over 1.6m followers on Facebook, over 660,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram.

In addition, the site’s YouTube channel has over 770,000 subscribers.

Just as with UPROXX, Warner says it has no intention to influence the editorial direction of HipHopDX in future.

A WMG spokesperson told MBW today: “HipHopDX continues to be led by Founder & CEO Sharath Cherian and his talented team.

“A stand-alone editorial entity with journalistic independence, the news site is being given investment to help grow its presence in additional countries.”

The news comes less than a month after MBW revealed that Warner Music Group had acquired social media influencer company IMGN Media.

“A stand-alone editorial entity with journalistic independence, HipHopDX is being given investment to help grow its presence in additional countries.”

Warner Music Group spokesperson

Our sources indicate that Warner paid $85m upfront for IMGN, which runs the popular Instagram and TikTok account Daquan.

Warner Music Group, run by CEO Steve Cooper, floated a portion of its company on the NASDAQ stock exchange in June.

Carrying the ticker ‘WMG’, the music company’s public market cap currently sits at just above $14.5bn, according to Google Finance data.Music Business Worldwide