Keywords bolsters its music and audio services with three new acquisitions

After a quiet start to the year, compulsive business purchaser Keywords Studios has announced the acquisition of three new assets. With these the company looks to improve its audio service offerings. London-based Cord Worldwide and Laced Music have been purchased together from their owner Cutting Edge for £4.5m. Cord provides branding and strategic consulting services, with a focus on music, while Laced is a music services company and record label specialising within the video games industry.

The third part of this musical triptych is Maximal Studio, an audio production house based in Sao Paulo in Brazil. The price for Maximal was set at an initial cash consideration of €0.3m, with up to €0.2m of deferred consideration due over the following two years, subject to its performance.

“Thus far, our audio service line has specialised entirely on voice over production for video games,” says Andrew Day, CEO of Keywords Studios. “Yet video games publishers/developers are major buyers of specifically composed or licensed music for use in games, are increasingly focused on using music assets as part of their brand or franchise identity and are becoming more sophisticated about how they buy and manage their music assets.

“We are, therefore, delighted that we will be able to add further value to our games clients through Laced’s specialism in licencing video game soundtracks for game companies and from music composers, and Cord’s expertise in music composition, rights management, music strategy consulting and audio branding.”