Warner/Chappell Music

Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. is an American music publishing company, and a division of the Warner Music Group. The company traces its origins back to 1811 and the founding of Chappell & Company, a music publishing company and instrument shop on London’s Bond Street ^[1] that, in 1929, began a rapid expansion period under Chairman Louis Dreyfus,^[2] including the acquisitions of M. Witmark & Sons, Remick Music Corporation, Harms, Inc., Chappell & Co., and Tamerlane Music, among others.^[3][4]

Warner/Chappell was created in 1987 in San Antonio, Texas when Warner Brothers Music Chairman Chuck Kaye led the company to purchase Chappell & Co. from PolyGram.^[5] and is ranked by Music & Copyright as world’s third-largest music publisher^[6] with a catalog of more than one million songs and a roster of more than 65,000 songwriters.^[7] Among the songs in the company's library are "Happy Birthday to You" and "Winter Wonderland."

In 2007, the company acquired Non-Stop Music.^[8] Additionally, in 2010 it acquired 615 Music, a Nashville-based production music company^[9] and subsequently united all the production music companies under the name Warner/Chappell Production Music in 2012 ^[10] In 2011, it acquired Southside Independent Music Publishing and its catalog of hit songwriters, including Bruno Mars, Brody Brown and J.R. Rotem.^[11]

In 2005, Warner/Chappell sold most of its printed music division, Warner Bros. Publications, to Alfred Publishing.^[12] and, in 2006, launched the Pan European Digital Licensing Initiative (P.E.D.L.). In 2007, when Radiohead released In Rainbows through its website on a pay-what-you-wish model, Warner/Chappell created a streamlined, one-of-a-kind licensing process for the songs on the album^[13] that allowed rights users from around the world to secure use of the music from a single location.^[14]

On February 27, 2015, Warner/Chappell made headlines in Australia when they had a YouTube video from Mike Baird, the Premier of New South Wales, removed because it contained two songs in the background (Everybody Hurts and Shake It Off) which Premier Baird had not obtained the licence for from Warner/Chappel Music.^[15]

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