Bandlab Acquires Two Iconic Music Magazines

Music creation platform Bandlab continues to grow its empire, adding two iconic British music magazines – NME and Uncut from UK publisher TI Media. The company is branching into all areas of the music business, from cloud music to DAW software to musical instruments and retail to social media and now, print magazines.

Bandlab Technologies, which is based in Singapore, will move the NME and Uncut to its media division, which is based in the UK.

You might remember that it wasn’t that long ago that Bandlab acquired DAW software developer Cakewalk from Gibson, giving new life to the product. What’s more, the company even launched a free version of its popular Sonar DAW software shortly afterwards.

As said in the first paragraph, Bandlab is creating somewhat of a music empire under the radar, as it already owns online publications Guitar.com, Lab.fm, and MusicTech. Plus, it also owns US guitarmakers Harmony and Heritage, Mono instrument cases, and Teisco effects pedals, which not many are aware of. And it owns the mighty Asian musical instrument retailer Swee Lee.

For a time BandLab Technologies even owned 49% of long-running US music magazine Rolling Stone, but eventually sold its interest back to majority shareholder Penske Media Corporation.

The thing to understand here is that Bandlab CEO Kuok Meng Ru is the son of  Kuok Khoon Hong, the founder of the world’s largest palm oil business, Wilmar International. The company has some deep pockets, so expect to see more acquisitions in the future.

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