Warner Music Group has announced a global partnership with Madonna that encompasses a new agreement for her entire recorded music catalog.
The deal that has Madonna returning to her previous longtime label home includes her Sire/Maverick/Warner catalog, plus her three most recent studio albums, MDNA, Rebel Heart, and Madame X, which were released by Interscope Records but will join the Warner catalog in 2025. Madonna exited Interscope in 2020.
Warner says its new agreement with Madonna covers 17 studio albums, as well as singles, soundtrack recordings, live albums and compilations.
Madonna’s longtime manager Guy Oseary at Maverick, Allen Grubman of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sachs P.C., Madonna’s business manager Richard Feldstein of NKSFB, and Max Lousada, Warner Music Group’s CEO of recorded music, executed the deal.
“Since the very beginning, Warner Music Group has helped bring my music and vision to all my fans around the world with the utmost care and consideration. They have been amazing partners, and I am delighted to be embarking on this next chapter with them to celebrate my catalogue from the last 40 years,” Madonna said in a statement.
Oseary added: “Over the past 30 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and spend time with many of Madonna’s incredible fans, and this new partnership will bring to fruition what so many of them have been patiently waiting for: a celebration of her groundbreaking catalogue. My partner Sara Zambreno and I are working closely with Warner Music Group to bring new life to these iconic works.”
“We’re honored to be forming a dynamic new partnership with an incomparable superstar whose influence on our musical and artistic landscape is immense and immutable,” said Lousada. “Madonna has changed the course of pop and dance music, while taking live performance to new heights of drama and invention. At the same time, she uses her fame to amplify some of the most important social issues and movements of our time. Constantly and fearlessly challenging convention, her four decades of music are not only an extraordinary body of work, but a playbook for creative and cultural evolution.”
In 2022, when Madonna celebrates the 40th anniversary of her recording career (she first signed a record deal with Warner’s Sire Records in 1982), an “extensive, multi-year series of catalog releases” will launch. Madonna is set to curate deluxe editions of her landmark albums and offer unique releases for special events, overseen by Warner catalog team.
Warner Music Group, a publicly traded company, also administers all of Madonna’s publishing through Warner Chappell Music.
Last week, Warner brought Cardi B’s publishing under its umbrella, announcing the rapper’s new deal with Warner Chappell Music. Cardi has been signed to WMG’s Atlantic Records since 2017.
