Beggars Music
- Based in
- London (registered office: Elsley Court, 20-22 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 8BE), United Kingdom
- Founded
- 2010 (incorporated 24 June 2010). No earlier trading name or predecessor catalogue was found in any document obtained.
- Website
- beggarsmusic.com
Beggars Music is a London-based music publisher that signs songwriters and administers their copyrights, operating alongside the recorded-music labels of Beggars Group: 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade, XL and Young. Its own website describes it as “a determinedly independent publishing company, administering its own rights with offices in London, LA and New York”, and names King Krule, Obongjayar, caroline, Lankum, Mica Levi, Snail Mail, bar italia, Nicolas Jaar, Yo La Tengo, Joanne Robertson, Moses Boyd and Burial among its signed writers.
The corporate vehicle, Beggars Music Limited, was incorporated in England and Wales on 24 June 2010 under company number 07294756 and is registered at Elsley Court, 20-22 Great Titchfield Street, London. It has not been independently owned since April 2020. UK Companies House lists XL Recordings Limited as the sole current person with significant control, holding 75% or more of the shares and voting rights since 30 April 2020, having bought out the three directors, Martin Mills, Andy Heath and Richard Russell, who previously owned the company equally. Trade coverage at the time reported that XL paid £2.025m for a 90% stake and that Heath retained the other 10%. A separate trade report, published in December 2025, said XL increased its holding again in 2024, “fully subsuming” the company; that step does not yet appear as a new filing on the UK register.
Downtown Music Publishing Africa announced on 31 January 2026 that it would bring the Beggars Music catalogue “to Africa” for sync and brand licensing. Nothing in that announcement, or anywhere on Beggars Music’s own site, states or implies any change in who owns the company.
It matters to this publication for the same reason as its sibling announcement nine days later, covering Arms Production Music: a UK rights holder is routing a catalogue into African sync and brand markets through a Johannesburg publisher, while both sides describe the catalogue in terms, “independent”, that speak to editorial identity rather than to who actually holds the shares.