Gaga Music and Warp Publishing Form Independent Partnership

Two of the independent music publishing world's more respected names just made their long-running relationship official. Gaga Music, the Melbourne-based publishing and sync specialist, and London's Warp Publishing announced a new formal partnership on August 31, timed to the eve of the 2026 BIGSOUND conference in Brisbane. Under the new arrangement, Warp becomes an active equity partner in Gaga Music alongside the company's founder Grant Gillies, and Warp Publishing director Theo Seffusatti and general manager Nadine Riezouw join the Gaga board as directors.

This is not a cold handshake between strangers. The two companies have worked together since 2017, with Gaga Music repping Warp's catalogue across Australia and New Zealand, and Warp returning the favor for Gaga's catalogue in the UK. The new deal upgrades that reciprocal arrangement into something with real structural teeth: shared ownership, shared board seats, and a stated goal of building international pathways for songwriters and composers across Australia, New Zealand, and the broader Asia Pacific region.

The deal also marks a clean break from Gaga Music's previous stakeholders at Inertia Music, though Gillies acknowledged their role in the company's history with a gracious note.

What Each Company Brings to the Table

Gaga Music is not a small operation. Founded in 2007, the company administers over 100,000 titles out of offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland. Its catalogue pulls from some of the most credible independent labels in the world: Secretly Canadian, Arts and Crafts, PIAS, Thrill Jockey, City Slang, Erased Tapes, and Third Side Music, among others. If you follow independent music seriously, you know these names.

Warp Publishing has been running for 15 years with offices in London and Los Angeles. Its roster includes Khruangbin, Danny Brown, Death Grips, Yves Tumor, Kelsey Lu, Boards of Canada, Daniel Lopatin, and Bibio, a collection of artists that spans electronic music, hip-hop, experimental composition, and beyond. The LA office matters here. Warp is not just a UK institution. It has direct infrastructure in the same city where so much sync work originates.

Riezouw, who previously served as GM of Gaga Music before moving to the same role at Warp Publishing, put it plainly: both companies operate with the same values around transparency and sustainable artist development. Having someone who has run both organizations sit on the board of the combined entity is a meaningful signal about how this partnership is designed to function.

Why This Deal Matters for Independent Songwriters and Composers

The timing and framing of this announcement are deliberate. Gillies specifically called out the current climate of consolidation and external investment in his public statement, positioning this move as an intentional counterweight. Major publishing deals driven by private equity and catalog acquisition funds have reshaped the industry over the last several years, and not always in ways that benefit working songwriters.

What Gaga Music and Warp Publishing are offering is a different model: independent ownership, a focus on sync and score opportunities, and genuine investment in long-term creative development rather than short-term catalog monetization. For composers and songwriters working in the Asia Pacific region especially, the expanded international pipeline this partnership creates could open doors that previously required a much larger, less personal company to unlock.

This kind of infrastructure deal rarely makes headlines outside of industry trades, but it is exactly the type of move that shapes how music gets placed in film, TV, and advertising, which in turn shapes which artists get heard by broader audiences and which ones generate meaningful publishing income over a career.

For independent artists and composers curious about how publishing and sync representation actually work at this level, our [Pass the Aux](/pass-the-aux) section covers the business side of music with that same independent lens. If you are a songwriter or producer looking to connect with the LA creative community, check out [how to submit](/submit) your work and stay up to date on industry events through our [events calendar](/events).

Financial terms of the Gaga Music and Warp Publishing deal were not disclosed. Watch for how this partnership develops through sync placements and roster announcements in the coming months. That is where the real evidence of what this collaboration can do will show up.