HarbourView Equity Partners has acquired the publisher's share of a selection of compositions written by Wolf Cousins, the songwriting collective founded by Max Martin and Shellback. The deal was announced on June 24, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.
What changes hands
The deal covers the publisher's share only, and only for a selected group of songs rather than the whole Wolf Cousins output. Wolf Cousins is a partnership between Warner Chappell, MXM and Shellback, and Warner Chappell continues to administer the catalog. The collective includes writers such as Ilya Salmanzadeh, Oscar Holter, Tove Lo, Oscar Görres, Ali Payami and others.
The catalog
The featured titles include songs recorded by some of the biggest pop acts of the last decade:
- Style and ...Ready For It?: Taylor Swift.
- Problem, Into You and No Tears Left To Cry: Ariana Grande.
- Can't Feel My Face: The Weeknd.
- Other works recorded by Imagine Dragons, Ellie Goulding, Tove Lo, DNCE and Demi Lovato.
Several of these songs are also used in the stage musical & Juliet, which adds a theatrical revenue stream.
Why it matters
HarbourView has been one of the most active catalog buyers of 2026. In recent months it has added Quincy Jones estate assets (March), the pre-2024 catalog of Stefflon Don (May) and Chaka Khan assets (June), on top of an earlier majority stake in the Slipknot catalog. Since its 2021 launch it has acquired more than 70 catalogs, around 41,000 songs.
The structure is the lesson here. Selling the publisher's share of a hand-picked set of songs, while an existing administrator keeps running the catalog, lets writers and publishers raise capital on their strongest assets without handing over everything. Modern pop hits with global streaming volume and extra uses such as musicals remain highly attractive to financial buyers, and partial, song-level sales are a practical option for rightsholders who want liquidity but also want to keep a stake in future upside.