Gaga Music and Warp Publishing Turn a Decade-Old Relationship Into a Full Partnership
Gaga Music, an independent Australian music publishing and sync specialist, has entered a new partnership with London-based Warp Publishing, with Warp becoming an active partner in the business alongside founder Grant Gillies. The deal was announced on Monday, 31 August, on the eve of the 2026 BIGSOUND conference in Brisbane, according to Billboard.
The two companies are not starting from scratch. They have worked together since 2017, when Gaga Music first began representing Warp Publishing's catalogue across Australia and New Zealand. Warp later returned the favour, handling Gaga's catalogue in the United Kingdom. The new arrangement formalises that history into shared ownership and governance.
Under the deal, Warp Publishing director Theo Seffusatti and general manager Nadine Riezouw join Gillies as directors on the board of Gaga Music. Financial terms were not disclosed. Gaga Music has also split from its former partners and stakeholders at Inertia Music as part of the transition.
Gaga Music was established in 2007 and administers and pitches over 100,000 titles — the business of getting songs placed in films, adverts and other media — through offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. Its catalogue includes works from Third Side Music, Arts & Crafts, Secretly Canadian, PIAS, Thrill Jockey, City Slang, Low Profile, Erased Tapes and others. Warp Publishing, which has been running for 15 years with offices in London and Los Angeles, provides publishing services for a roster spanning Kelvin Krash, Danny Brown, Yves Tumor, Kelsey Lu, Daniel Lopatin, Khruangbin, Death Grips, Caterina Barbieri, Kwes, Dry Cleaning, Bibio and Boards of Canada. In April 2025, Warp also joined IMPEL, the international collective licensing agency that manages digital music publishing rights, as Music Week reported at the time.
For the artists and songwriters whose works sit in these catalogues, the practical effect is consolidation: two companies that already knew each other's repertoires now have a shared stake in pitching and administering them across more territories. For Gaga Music, it means new board-level input from a publisher with a foothold in two of the world's biggest music markets. For Warp, it deepens access to the Australasian region through an established local operator rather than a remote sub-publishing arrangement.
The timing aligns with BIGSOUND, the annual Brisbane conference that draws Australian and international industry delegates for showcases, panels and deal-making. Publishing partnerships of this structure — one independent taking an equity stake in another across borders — sit alongside label acquisitions and distribution deals as the kind of transactions that surface during conference week, when the people running both companies are in the same city.
