Social enterprise

Olsen Verlag is a social enterprise. This means that we are a trading company rather than a charity, which means that we buy and sell things for profit. However, our fundamental purpose is not to make money for shareholders. Instead, our fundamental purposes are to bring music to more people and to help musicians, especially young musicians.

Unlike a charity, there is no precise or legal definition of what makes a social enterprise, and social enterprises take many forms. As a matter of law, Olsen Verlag (UK) Limited is a private company limited by shares, meaning that legally it is no different from any other private limited company.

The difference lies in our fundamental purposes, and certain corporate policies we have.

Ordinarily, a company exists to create ‘shareholder value’, but Olsen Verlag does not. This is for the simple reason that James did not set it up for this purpose. James started Olsen Verlag in 2017 to publish and promote his music, and the commercial rationale for this was that, if the company did its job effectively, James could focus more on composing, which would benefit him commercially. So there was no need for Olsen Verlag to benefit him commercially as well.

Olsen Verlag has two fundamental purposes:

  1. To bring music to more people
  2. To help musicians, especially young musicians

In order to achieve these purposes, we reinvest all our profits so that we can do more work. We don’t plan to pay any dividends to our shareholder, which means that we can spend all the money we make on developing new projects.

You can read more about our fundamental purposes and values here.