G
OLNAR KHOSROWSHAHI
once played at the highest
levels as a pianist — she
attended both the Royal
Academy of Music in the United
Kingdom and the Royal Conservatory
in Canada — and didn’t even consider
a career in the music business until
after she worked as managing director
for the Canadian pharmaceuticals
firm DRI Capital. “When you look at
an inventor trying to create a mole-
cule versus a songwriter creating a
song,” she says, “it’s really not very
different.”
This revelation led the Iranian-
Canadian pianist turned entrepreneur
to found independent publisher Reser-
voir Media in New York in 2007 under
the umbrella of a family office. (Khos-
rowshahi’s father, Hassan, is a billion-
aire businessman, one of the richest
men in Canada; her cousin Dara is
currently the CEO of Uber.) Among
her most formative acquisitions were
U.K.-based publisher Reverb Music,
which publishes songwriters like John
Fortis (Ellie Goulding, Prodigy) and
Jamie Hartman (The Wanted, Joss
Stone), and First State Media Group,
which owns compositions by Sheryl
Crow, John Denver and Billy Stray-
horn. Reservoir also owns rights to the
film scores of Hans Zimmer, such as
The Lion King and The Dark Knight.
In May 2017, Reservoir began to
expand further when it purchased
a stake in artist management and
publishing company Big Life Manage-
ment, which represents clients includ-
ing Badly Drawn Boy and Bloc Party.
In August, it acquired Blue Raincoat
Music and its subsidiary Chrysalis Re-
cords, which owns the master rights to
songs like Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing
Compares 2 U” and Generation X’s
“Dancing With Myself.”
Khosrowshahi has kept Reservoir ahead of
the curve; in 2017 it licensed Denver’s “Take Me
Home, Country Roads” to advertise the then-
new Google Home. Meanwhile, the company has
become a staple on Billboard’s quarterly ranking of
the top 10 publishers, with a stable of artists like
Migos’ Offset and Takeoff, A Boogie Wit Da Hood-
ie (signed in June), 2 Chainz and Young Thug. (In
the second quarter of 2019, Reservoir held a 1.96%
market share of the top Billboard Hot 100 songs.)
Khosrowshahi says she is also deeply passionate
about her philanthropic work: She sits on the
board of directors of the NMPA’s SONGS Foun-
dation and Yo-Yo Ma’s nonprofit Silkroad, which
promotes multicultural artistic collaboration.
Now, Reservoir is a full-service music company
with 110,000 copyrights, 20,000 master recordings
and locations in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto,
London — and Nashville, which opened in April.
But Khosrowshahi is always looking for more ways
for Reservoir to expand. “We anticipate getting
deeper into masters,” she says. “We are certainly
looking at ways we can participate in the emerging
markets and add that to our services.”
When you established Reservoir, what was
the market need that you were trying to fill?
It would be wrong to say that we were going to
come in and change the age-old model. In the
context of how this business was going to be
FROM THE DESK OF
GOLNAR
KHOSROWSHAHI
Founder/CEO
Reservoir Media
BY HARLEY BROWN
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
WINNIE AU
“We have the
benefit of youth,
and what I mean
by that is that
we didn’t inherit
a bunch of
grandfathered-
in systems,” says
Khosrowshahi,
photographed
Sept. 13 at
Reservoir Media
in New York.
28 BILLBOARD • SEPTEMBER 28, 2019
THE MARKET
● SoundExchange CFO ANJULA SINGH received the added role of executive vp. ● Spotify hired BuzzFeed chief revenue officer LEE BROWN as vp global sales strategy.