SMV x Westbury Music – celebrating a 20-year partnership

January 01, 2024

This year marks a significant milestone, as we joyfully celebrate 20 years of a remarkable and enduring partnership with Westbury Music. Our collaboration is based on a close friendship that has been built up over years.

Founded in 1984 by Caroline Robertson, Westbury Music Ltd is an independent publisher of contemporary British music. With a staggering collection of copyrights with several hundred catalogues, Westbury Music has carved a niche as one of the most respected independent publishers globally.

From the start, their strength lay in specialist music, rather than mainstream or pop. The first ever signing was Rubber Band Music, the catalogue of legendary funkateer, Bootsy Collins. Over the next fifteen years, the company grew into a music consultancy and administering publisher of high repute.

Westbury has also been entrenched with legendary Jamaican reggae producers and musicians from the very beginning. For instance, they have been overseeing legendary producer and singer Winston Riley’s catalogue. Riley was one of the most sampled reggae producers ever. His seminal 1973 instrumental “Stalag 17” has been repurposed by countless Jamaican artists and sampled or interpolated by dozens of international acts, including Run-DMC and Alicia Keys.

Their catalogs also contain numerous other legendary reggae chart gems: "Bam Bam" by Sister Nancy, "Ring The Alarm" by Tenor Saw, "Night Nurse" by Gregory Isaac, "Liquidator by Harry J Allstars" and not forgetting the mega hit "Chase The Devil" by Max Romeo. The latter was sampled by numerous prestigious artists, such as the British band The Prodigy, who achieved gold status in the UK with their hit "Out Of Space" and in Jay Z’s “Lucifer” on his career-defining black album.

Producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman’s first UK No. 1 chart hit was "You Spin Me Round" by Dead Or Alive. The song reached number 11 in the US Billboard Hot 100 of the same year, making it the best-selling single. The hit reached high chart positions in numerous European countries and was voted the 17th most popular song of the 1980s by the British general public. The hit has been covered numerous times. Flo Rida adapted the rhythm and lyrics of the chorus and incorporated them into his 2009 single “Right Round (feat. Ke$ha)”, which was used in major advertising campaigns around the world.

As partners, we at SMV take immense pride in the diverse range of wonderful music and are happy to represent a catalog larded with countless pearls. We are looking forward to continuing this terrific collaboration in the future.

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