Primary Wave Acquires Pete Townshend Catalog
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- Pete Townshend partnered with Primary Wave Music in a nine-figure deal acquiring certain music rights, name/image/likeness assets, and rights to exploit future creative projects, with terms undisclosed.
- Spirit Music confirmed to Variety it no longer holds Townshend's publishing — which it acquired in 2017 for a reported $100 million after a partial acquisition five years earlier — and rights to songs including 'My Generation,' 'Baba O'Riley,' 'Behind Blue Eyes,' 'Pinball Wizard,' 'Won't Get Fooled Again' and 'Let My Love Open the Door' are in the Primary Wave deal.
- Eel Pie Recording Productions, Townshend's company, owns recorded-music rights to most or all of his solo catalog (distributed by Universal), while the Who's recorded-music catalog is owned by Universal — meaning at least some of those rights are presumably also included.
- Townshend has sold over 100 million albums worldwide as a solo artist and with the Who, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and received Kennedy Center Honors in 2008.
- Primary Wave Music, founded in 2006, already holds catalogs of Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Nicks, Notorious B.I.G., James Brown, Whitney Houston, Aerosmith, Def Leppard and dozens of others, and per the source exploits its holdings 'aggressively but always in cooperation with the artist or the artist's estate.'
- 'Tommy' and 'Quadrophenia' — Townshend's iconic conceptual albums — have been repeatedly reimagined: 'Tommy' was a 1975 film, enjoyed a long Broadway run revived in 2024 and won five Tony Awards including Best Original Score; 'Quadrophenia' premiered as a ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in May 2025.
Why it matters: Spirit Music paid a reported $100 million for Townshend's publishing in 2017, meaning the catalog changed hands again within eight years — a marker of how active the classic-rock catalog market remains. For Primary Wave, adding Townshend to a roster that already includes Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Stevie Nicks strengthens its classic-rock holdings and its track record of aggressive exploitation across films, musicals, ballets and synchs.
