In the previous four parts (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4) of the series on music investment marketplaces, we analysed many different business models, including those that have failed. In this fifth and final part of the blog series, we will summarise the findings from parts 1-4 and assess the economic potential…

JKBX, pronounced like ‘jukebox’, could be a game changer for the music investment markets. Rather than offering low-yield music catalogues from second-tier artists, JKBX sells profit participation rights to royalty streams from valuable catalogues, such as that housing the songs of OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder. By doing this, JKBX links the billion-dollar music rights market…

The second wave of music investment marketplaces started in Europe, particularly in Sweden, from 2021 onwards (for the first start-up wave see part 2 of the series). With Tangy Market, Master Exchange and Anotherblock three new players entered the Swedish market between 2021 and 2023. The wave of new companies continued with Bolero (2021) in…

When SongVest ceased operations in 2013 and Sean Peace started building Royalty Exchange (part 1), the first copycats were trying to establish music investment marketplaces in Europe. Unlike in the United States, it is not possible to sell music rights in most European countries; they can only be licensed to users. This is why big…

The five-part blog series “Follow the Money! Music as a Speculative Commodity” (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5), examined the boom in the music rights market, fuelled primarily by large financial corporations. While billion-dollar investments in large music catalogues are only accessible to institutional investors, such as pension funds and…

Private equity projects, in which music catalogues are bought up for millions, could just be a transitional phase towards a new development in which music becomes a speculative commodity. The buzzword is securitisation. This means that financial giants are developing new financial products based on music rights and the income streams they generate. In business…

In part 1 of this blog series, we provided a brief history of the music rights sales boom and demonstrated that private equity firms are the main investors in music catalogues. In part 2, we introduced the key players, including major private equity firms such as Blackstone, KKR, the Carlyle Group, and Apollo Global Management.…

Shamrock Capital Advisors, a private equity company based in Los Angeles, made headlines with the acquisition of Taylor Swift’s first six albums from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in October 2020. The deal, worth a total of US $405 million, resulted in a significant profit for Scooter Braun. However, Taylor Swift opposed the sale and planned…

In part 1 of the series, we traced the music rights sales boom since 2019. In this part, we will take a closer look at the companies that provide the financial resources to acquire music rights catalogues. These are some of the largest companies in the international financial industry. They include BlackRock, Blackstone, KKR, The…

Two years ago, I wrote a blog series called ‘Music as an Investment’, in which I analysed the boom in music rights sales. In it, I highlighted the role of the newly emerging music IPR companies such as BMG Rights Management, Primary Wave, Round Hill Music, Hipgnosis and Reservoir Media Management. They have invested hundreds…

In the US, the advance of music streaming has revealed the limitations of the existing copyright system, which was still entirely focused on the record economy. In particular, the mechanical rights that had to be obtained by labels when a musical work was recorded defied the logic of music streaming. This caused legal uncertainty not…

The boom in the music rights market continued in 2023. In January of the new year, Primary Wave announced that it had acquired all the recorded music rights and income streams from the Atlantic years of the British rock band YES, as well as the music rights of the two former members of the US…

Reservoir Media Management is a new type of music publisher, launched in 2021 through the financial vehicle of a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) on the NASDAQ. Reservoir has grown by acquiring legendary recording and music publishing catalogues such as Chrysalis Records, Shapiro Bernstein and Tommy Boy Records. The following blog post tells the story…

For several years, Hipgnosis made headlines with spectacular acquisitions of music rights catalogues worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It bought the music catalogues of Shakira, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and other superstars, and in 2018 went public as Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd. in the largest IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The weakening economic…

In 2010, former hedge fund manager Josh Gruss founded the music publishing company Round Hill Music in New York City together with Neil Gillis and Richard Rowe with the aim of acquiring and commercially exploiting music copyrights. How Round Hill Music has become a major player in the music rights market that has raised hundreds…

Primary Wave is a new type of music publisher founded in New York City in January 2006 by former Virgin Records CEO, Larry Mestel. Primary Wave does not aim at the acquisition and exploitation of classical publishing rights, but instead purchases the artist’s share of publishing rights and master rights, primarily to monetise their use…

Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) is an interesting case of a company exiting the music business in the 2000s and re-entering it in 2009 to invest billions of dollars in publishing and master catalogues and to become the fourth largest music company in the world behind the three majors – Universal, Sony and Warner. BMG’s re-entry…