If you judge a company by its lift – and believe me, we at Music Week often do – then Spirit B-Unique is, like its elevator, going up in the world.

The publishing company – a slightly-more-than-one-year-old partnership between the British indie publisher/label B-Unique (“We’re basically a record company that’s morphed into a publishing company, but still has a record company mentality,” explains co-president Mark Lewis) and the ambitious US rights management company Spirit Music Group – may have modestly ...