finance
Citrin Cooperman estimates a record-setting number of music catalogs with a combined value of around $20 billion were floated to investors last year. While economic and political uncertainty so far in 2025 has sent stocks and global trade on a roller coaster, the head of Citrin Cooperman’s music and entertainment valuation practice Barry Massarsky says his team has never been busier.
Massarsky and partner Jake DeVries reviewed over 550 music catalogs with a combined asset value of $10.7 billion last year, a figure that Massarsky says “demonstrates very loudly how much volume is in the marketplace.”
“Yesterday, I was dealing with a seminal holiday music catalog, a well-known classical music artist, this group from Nigeria, and film and television,” Massarsky told Billboard during a conversation in mid-April at Citrin Cooperman’s offices in Rockefeller Center.
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Over his two-plus decades in practice, Massarsky’s best known clients have been Primary Wave, Round Hill Music, Hipgnosis, Reservoir and nearly every major music company. Since joining Citrin in 2021, their business expanded to offer entertainment tax advice, audit inspection, transaction strategy, and recently, to include a valuation team focused Hollywood actors’ and directors’ participation rights.
Massarsky and DeVries shared their observations about the current market value being placed on pop and hip-hop music, the average size of a catalog they valued in 2024—it’s smaller than you might think—and the ongoing popularity of music from the 1980s.
Here are some highlights from our conversation:
Hip-hop and pop music catalogs 10 years old and older fetch the highest valuation multiples, a trend that’s held steady since 2022.
Pop music and hip-hop catalogs of songs released more than a decade ago received valuation multiples—a measure of future growth—of 17.6 and 17.4 respectively on average from 2022-2024. Latin catalogs had an average multiple of 17.1, country catalogs had 16.8 average multiple and rock music averaged a 16.7 multiple.
Some of the biggest hip-hop catalog deals of recent years include Primary Wave’s $200 million acquisition of Notorious B.I.G.’s works, Shamrock Holdings’ purchase of Dr. Dre’s catalog along with other rights for around $200 million and Opus Music Group’s acquisition of Juice WRLD’s catalog for $115 million, according to Billboard estimates.
Those deals aside, the priciest catalogs have been mostly older vintage pop and rock music from artists like Queen, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan.
Massarsky says hip-hop catalogs are now in-demand because “it is one of the most favored formats for continued streaming activity” and the revenue it generates from publishing royalties has risen significantly due to higher payout rates coming from streaming platforms in recent years.
DeVries says hip-hop music is also over-indexed, or consumed at a proportionately higher rate, on Apple Music, which adds to its value because Apple Music’s payout rates are high among streaming platforms since it does not offer any free plans.
“If there previously was a concern about whether Hip-hop had legs to grow and whether the music would have certain constancy of staying power,” Massarsky says, “the data suggests the answer is yes.”
While deals like Sony Music’s $1.27 billion acquisition of Queen’s catalog and naming rights get the most attention, Massarsky and DeVries say the average valuation for a catalog they worked on in 2024 was $19 million.
“[That] illustrates how much volume there is outside of what garners the most attention,” DeVries says.
Catalogs that included master recording and publishing rights received the highest multiples because often those catalogs are also near the end of certain contracts, and a new buyer could have the opportunity to assume administration or ownership of certain other rights.
Music from the 1980s performs better on streaming platforms than music from the 1970s, 1990s or 2000s.
Music released in the 1980s saw a nearly 20% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in cash flows from U.S. streams for the years 2022 to 2024, compared to a 17.9% rate for the 1970s, 14.9% for the 1990s and 14% for music of the 2000s.
Massarsky thinks the strength of older music comes, in part, from adult listeners who started Spotify subscriptions during the pandemic.
“An older generation turned to streaming services during that period, and I think they stayed,” Massarsky says, adding the popularity of 1980s music has not resulted in lower streaming revenue for music from other decades.
“It has not crowded out newer music. It’s just added more value to the supply of music on streaming.”
Although Citrin’s team is not involved in catalog sales directly, the value they give a catalogs is usually close to the price an asset sells for. In other words, despite occasionally eye-popping sums, buyers rarely overpay.
Citrin’s valuations are often commissioned by rights holders for use by commercial banks to secure financing or other bank services. The banks test Citrin’s valuations to determine the difference between the revenue an asset actually generated and how much Citrin estimated it might generate. Massarsky says Citrin’s estimates always fall within the bank’s acceptable range of plus or minus 5%.
“For me, that implies that our forecasts are fairly accurate, and also implies, I think, that what these funds are transacting at is credible,” he says.
DeVries says that they might not know if there is a gulf between Citrin’s valuation and ultimately where the catalog transacts. But if a buyer overpays, it is likely because of “some qualitative, intangible” benefit, like making a splash for a newcomer to the market.
Buyers and sellers of catalogs are not showing signs of holding their breath.
If there hadn’t been catalogs that were re-sold in 2024—such as Blackstone buying out shareholders of Hipngosis Songs Fund Limited or Opus Group selling their catalog to Litmus—”it might be a different story this year,” DeVries says. But investor demand is robust, Citrin says.
“The resiliency of music as an asset class is why there haven’t been any significant disruptions,” DeVries says. “We had the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, and oddly enough music thrived. Now with questions around tariffs, music is a protected vehicle from tariffs. When these large hurdles are thrown at music, it has continued to prove itself as essentially unperturbed.”
Jeremy Tucker of Raven Music Partners is content to operate in areas of the music business that attract relatively little attention. “I am certainly not going to pretend that I’m the coolest person at cocktail parties,” Tucker says, “and I’ve never signed any famous bands as a former A&R rep.”
As co-founder and managing member of the Nashville-based investment firm, Tucker isn’t focused on acquiring what he calls “trophy” catalogs — the Taylor Swifts, Bruce Springsteen and Queens of the world. Nor is he creating biopic films made for the artists in his catalog. Instead, he’s wringing out value from acquired music catalogs and trying to provide his investors a good, risk-adjusted return.
While interest in music rights from financial buyers has exploded in the last five years, Raven Music Partners launched in 2015 and has built a 15,000-song portfolio of assets including recorded music, music publishing and derivative rights such as producers’ royalties. Tucker and his team focus on the small- to medium-sized part of the market with deal sizes typically ranging from $5 million to $35 million but going up to $100 million.
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The world of music catalog investors can be broken into two camps: strategic buyers and financial buyers. Large music companies like Universal Music Group are called strategic buyers because they have a large infrastructure and creative talent to generate additional value from catalogs. These multi-faceted companies will pursue everything from movies to box sets to artist-branded jukeboxes in order to generate licensing income from their catalogs.
Raven Music Partners is a financial buyer, the kind of investor that treats music royalties as financial instruments similar to stocks, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and debt. Financial buyers seek out catalogs with predictable cash flows and opportunities to generate a better return. Strategic buyers often pay a premium to control 100% of the rights; financial buyers are more willing to have fractional ownership of a recording or composition.
“What we’re focused on is the boring part of the business,” says Tucker, a former managing partner at Merrill Lynch who specialized in alternative asset classes.
Administration fees lack pizazz but are a good example of how a financial buyer can improve the returns on its investments. After an acquisition, Raven Music Partners will consolidate the rights under its rights management partner, Endurance Music Group, to cut out as many of the middleman fees as possible. Tucker says it’s not uncommon to see administration or distribution fees on acquired catalogs around 15% to 25%, and he’s seen catalogs with fees as high as 40%. Reducing fees isn’t the sexiest of accomplishments, but it increases the catalog’s net cash flows. “Saving 10% in collection fees can be pretty meaningful in terms of value-add,” he says.
There are also creative options for finding return on its catalog investments: re-releasing the masters in high-fidelity audio and Dolby Atmos, anniversary editions of albums or songs, and YouTube lyric videos, for example. Sometimes, says Tucker, there’s value in something as simple as a YouTube fan page or making sure all an artist’s tracks are available on the platform. “There are plenty of bands out there that might have several million repeat followers on Spotify or one of these other DSPs, but maybe they’re not that focused on all of the different media.”
Tucker says the Raven catalog has “a good amount” of rock, country, pop and Christian music, with some hip-hop and Latin. “From a genre standpoint, we are agnostic, and we think that all of these genres have value,” he says. “What’s important is that they have a fan base that cares.” The catalog includes well- known tracks by major artists, such as “Whiskey Glasses” by Morgan Wallen, “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor, and “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur.
There’s a lot more music for financial buyers like Raven Music Partners to acquire. Tucker puts a rough estimate of $500 billion on the total addressable market for recorded music and publishing assets. The majors probably own close to half of that number, he says, while financial buyers like Raven Music Partners probably own “less than $20 billion.” That leaves much of the market potentially for sale. And with more artists retaining ownership of their rights, Tucker believes there will continue to be investment opportunities.
“We don’t think that it’s gotten to the point where people can’t compete in this market. Some of the more iconic catalogs are, of course, going to have everyone in the space interested in owning them. But for us, because we focus on a small- to medium-sized part of the market where things are a little more fragmented, we just don’t see that much repeat competition from the same people.”
In March, Raven Music Partners formed a joint venture with Aquarian Holdings, an asset manager with nearly $22 billion of assets under management, to invest in music rights. Raven’s ability to unlock value from catalogs through “active management and creative monetization strategies” aligns with Aquarian’s belief that music can be “both culturally significant and financially compelling,” says Rudy Sahay, founder and managing partner of Aquarian Holdings.
“At Aquarian, we’re focused on backing high-quality, enduring assets — and few assets are as enduring as great music,” says Sahay. “We see real value in partnering with Raven Music Partners, whose investment strategy is rooted in both discipline and deep industry connectivity.”
Pophouse Entertainment, the Swedish catalog company behind the virtual live show ABBA Voyage, said on Monday it raised a total of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to invest in acquiring catalogs and entertainment experiences around those music rights.
The fundraise consists of 1 billion euros raised through a private equity fund, and 200 million euros ($216 million) raised through dedicated co-investment vehicles, where outside investors put money to work alongside the Fund in certain transactions. Roughly 30% of the fund has already been deployed into partnerships related to the acquisition of rights to songs by KISS, Cyndi Lauper, Avicii and Swedish House Mafia.
Founded by by ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus and Conni Jonsson, of the Swedish global investment firm EQT AB, Pophouse has been acquiring the publishing, recording and name, image and likeness rights to iconic pop catalogs and then building entertainment experiences around them, through theatrical and virtual shows, museums and movies.
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Pophouse’s playbook has been at work through productions like The Avicii Experience, a tribute museum to the late dance music producer that opened in his hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, in 2021; Mamma Mia! The Party, an interactive dinner party set in London theater modeled after a taverna from the Greek island of Skopelos; ABBA Voyage, the band’s wildly successful virtual show that uses ABBA-tars to digitally depict the foursome as they looked in 1979, and ABBA The Museum, which opened in 2013.
KISS, which sold its name and likeness rights to Pophouse, has hinted that a virtual performance of its songs could launch in Las Vegas in 2027.
“By investing across publishing, recording, and brand rights, Pophouse has created a uniquely attractive prospect not only for investors but also for artists, empowering them to explore and amplify their legacy to new generations of fans,” Pophouse managing partner Johan Lagerlöf, said in a statement.
Pophouse’s CEO is Per Sundin, the first music industry label executive to partner with Spotify when he at Universal Music Sweden and president of the labe’s Nordic region business. Jonsson recruiting Sundin to helm Pophouse with the intention of taking advantage of the external business opportunities music rights present in the streaming era.
“Facing unprecedented disruption caused by streaming and technology, music intellectual property presents a differentiated, lifetime opportunity for investors,” Jonsson said in a statement. “We are reshaping the entertainment industry by applying an active, value-add approach that unlocks future generations for fandom.”
In December, Influence Media Partners, the music investing company backed by BlackRock and the Warner Music Group, joined the growing music industry trend of using asset-backed securitization to finance acquisitions and operations by raising about $360 million through a private placement in a deal lead by Goldman Sachs, sources say.
Besides the Influence Media deal, the waning months of 2024 also saw Concord raising $850 million through its third asset-backed bond offering run by Apollo Global Management in October; while Blackstone led a $1.47 billion securitization for its Hipgnosis Song Asset company. In each deal, the bonds and notes are collateralized by the music assets and income streams of the respective companies. The offerings from Concord and Hipgnosis have public filings with the appropriate regulatory agencies, but the Influence Media offering, as a private placement, does not have to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
As interest rates rise, asset-backed securities (ABS) are expected to become increasingly popular funding vehicles for music companies because they have fixed, five-year interest rates. In the past, Concord CEO Bob Valentine has compared these securitizations to fixed, low-interest-rate loans.
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Influence Media co-managing partner Lynn Hazan, the former CFO for Epic Records, worked with BlackRock executives on the deal, according to sources.
Influence Media, which was founded in 2019, has since bought stakes in some 30 music catalogs, and in early 2022 received additional funding to the tune of $750 million provided by BlackRock and the Warner Music Group. The acquired catalogs include music by Enrique Iglesias, Future, Logic, Julia Michaels, Ali Tamposi, Tainy and Harry Styles collaborator Tyler Johnson. The new funding is expected to be deployed in buying more music catalog assets.
Initially, it looked like the Influence Media Partners asset-backed securities offering was slow in coming together as bond investors looked at the Concord and Hipgnosis offerings, but in the end, the Influence offering — which also had Truist as the co-structuring and co-placement agent — came together nicely for the New York-based music investment company, attracting funding from about a half-dozen investors, sources say.
South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service is investigating HYBE and its chairman, Bang Si-hyuk, over allegations he earned $285 million from the company’s 2020 initial public offering through profit-sharing deals with three large shareholders.
HYBE, then named Big Hit Entertainment, went public in 2020 after building its primary act, BTS, into global stars. The IPO raised approximately $820 million and confirmed HYBE’s arrival as a major player in the global music business. But while the IPO was a success for the company, many individuals who bought shares for well above the IPO price lost money as the price retreated in the following weeks.
Last week, The Korea Economic Daily broke the story that Bang personally pocketed about 400 billion won ($285 million) from agreements made with private shareholders STIC Investments, Estone Equity Partners and New Main Equity a few years before the IPO. Those agreements, according to the report, called for Bang to receive 30% of the shareholders’ profits from their sale of Big Hit shares following the IPO. But if Big Hit failed to go public before an agreed-upon time, Bang would have had to repurchase the shares plus interest.
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In a statement posted to HYBE’s investor relations website on Friday (Nov. 29), the company confirmed the existence of a shareholder agreement but dismissed the notion that Bang broke any securities law. “During the process of preparing for the listing, our company provided the relevant shareholder agreement to the listing underwriters, and the listing underwriters also reviewed the relevant shareholder agreement in accordance with the listing-related laws,” the statement reads. “In this regard, we have determined that our company did not violate any relevant laws during the listing process.”
A HYBE official provided more detail about the shareholder agreement in a statement to The Korean Herald. Prior to the IPO, one of HYBE’s investors requested to know the IPO timeline, which HYBE refused to share. Worried about unnamed uncertainties, the shareholder demanded a “put-back option,” or a right to sell an equity at a pre-determined price and time. But HYBE “couldn’t sustain itself under such conditions,” this person stated, and Bang “took on the risk himself” and personally agreed to the option.
South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service was quoted in media reports as saying it’s investigating HYBE and Bang for possible violations of the country’s Capital Markets Act, including how a private equity fund acquired Big Hit shares prior to the IPO and whether Big Hit omitted information from its securities filing. The Korea Exchange stock market is also examining relevant documents for potential violations.
When Big Hit shares debuted on the Korea Exchange on Oct. 15, 2020, strong demand drove the share price from the 135,000 won ($118) IPO price to 351,000 won ($308) on its opening day. But Big Hit’s price fell 22.3% the next day and dropped another 29% over the next two weeks, leaving many individual investors with losses. (The stock rebounded over time. An investor who bought at the peak on the stock’s opening day could have sold for a profit had they waited one year.) The Korea Economic Daily article contended the drop-off was “largely driven” by the private equity fund’s “massive selloff” of Big Hit shares after the IPO.
Billionaire hedge funder and Universal Music Group board member Bill Ackman called for UMG to move its stock listing and legal headquarters to the United States from Amsterdam after violent attacks on Israeli soccer fans overnight in the Dutch capital. Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema said fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were attacked and “pelted with […]
Concord is raising $850 million through an existing asset-backed security (ABS), according to a new report by Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA). These new notes are the third series of notes of a $2.6 billion ABS. The proceeds will be used to acquire approximately $217 million of assets that will be contributed to the ABS’s collateral […]
Universal Music Group Nashville has appointed Robert Kilduff as chief financial officer. Kilduff brings to the role more than three decades of experience in financial leadership, strategic financial planning, operations, and corporate development.
Kilduff previously served as CFO for non-profit organization, the Gary Sinise Foundation. He has also served as CFO of New Form Entertainment, vice president of financial planning & analysis for WME, and vice president of financial planning & analysis for Universal Music Group North America. Kilduff has also helmed financial strategy for Broadramp, Inc. as an early tech start up, spearheaded the launch of an international software division for special effects company Digital Domain, and directed international financial teams and operations integration for the Viacom subsidiary Neopets.com/ Kilduff’s other finance roles have included PricewaterhouseCoopers Strategy Consulting, Warner Bros. Studios, and former Big Six accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand. Kilduff holds degrees from UCLA and Columbia Business School.
“Having helped lead the financial growth strategy of businesses in music, film/television, and technology sectors, Bob has a wealth of knowledge that will be instrumental in the growth strategy of Universal Music Group Nashville,” said Universal Music Group Nashville Chair/CEO, Cindy Mabe in a statement. “He is the unicorn we were looking for to help grow the next era of UMGN. I am so excited for him to join our team.”
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Kilduff added, “I am thrilled to rejoin UMG, a company with such a rich history of creative excellence, and eager to contribute to its ongoing success and future growth.”
The addition of Kilduff is the latest shift for UMG Nashville, following the appointment of Derek Anderson as senior vp of commerce last month. The label group also recently teamed up with Timbaland’s Mosley Music.
The label group Universal Music Group Nashville consists of imprints Capitol Records Nashville, EMI Records Nashville, MCA Nashville, and Mercury Nashville, as well as comedy label Capitol Comedy Nashville, which launched last year. In February, UMG Nashville revealed the launch of its distribution arm Silver Wings Records, as well as the launch of its film/tv production unit Sing Me Back Home Productions.
UMG Nashville’s artist roster includes Alan Jackson, Anne Wilson, Billy Currington, Brad Paisley, Brothers Osborne, Bryce Leatherwood, Carrie Underwood, Carter Faith, Catie Offerman, Caylee Hammack, Chris Stapleton, Dalton Dover, Darius Rucker, Dierks Bentley, Dillon James, Eric Church, George Strait, Hootie & The Blowfish, Jon Pardi, Jordan Davis, Josh Ross, Josh Turner, Kacey Musgraves, Kassi Ashton, Keith Urban, Little Big Town, Louie TheSinger, Luke Bryan, Luke Grimes, Maddie & Tae, Mickey Guyton, Parker McCollum, Priscilla Block, Reba McEntire, Sam Hunt, Sam Williams, The War And Treaty, Timothy Wayne, Tucker Wetmore, Tyler Hubbard, Vince Gill, Vincent Mason, and more, as well as comedian Nate Bargatze.
Global investment giant Blackstone said on Monday it would pay a penny more to take over Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF), the London-listed company that owns Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog, because in a revised takeover plan disclosed Monday it is paying less in advisory fees. In a joint announcement, Blackstone and HSF’s board of directors said they approved the offer […]
Suno, a generative AI music company, has raised $125 million in its latest funding round, according to a post on the company’s blog. The AI music firm, which is one of the rare start-ups that can generate voice, lyrics and instrumentals together, says it wants to usher in a “future where anyone can make music.”
Suno allows users to create full songs from simple text prompts. While most of its technology is proprietary, the company does lean on OpenAI’s ChatGPT for lyric and title generation. Free users can generate up to 10 songs per month, but with its Pro plan ($8 per month) and Premier plan ($24 per month), a user can generate up to 500 songs or 2,000 songs, respectively, on a monthly basis and are given “general commercial terms.”
The company names some of its investors in the announcement, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective. Suno also says it has been working closely with a team of advisors, including 3LAU, Aaron Levie, Alexandr Wang, Amjad Masad, Andrej Karpathy, Aravind Srinivas, Brendan Iribe, Flosstradamus, Fred Ehrsam, Guillermo Rauch and Shane Mac.
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Suno is commonly believed to be one of the most advanced AI music models on the market today, but in past interviews, the company has not disclosed what materials are included in its training data. Expert Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained and former vp of audio for Stability AI, warned in a recent piece for Music Business Worldwide that it seems likely that Suno was trained on copyrighted material without consent given the way he has been able to generate music using the model that closely resembles copyrights.
In a recent Rolling Stone story about the company, investor Antonio Rodriguez mentioned that Suno’s lack of licenses with music companies is not a concern to him, saying that this lack of such licenses is “the risk we had to underwrite when we invested in the company, because we’re the fat wallet that will get sued right behind these guys.… Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”
Suno representatives have previously said, however, that their model will not let anyone create music by using prompts like “ballad in the style of Radiohead” or employ the voices of specific artists.
Many AI companies, including OpenAI, argue that training on copyrights without licenses in place is “fair use,” but the legality of this practice is still being determined in the United States. The New York Times has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for training on its copyrighted archives without consent, credit or compensation, and Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO and other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for using its lyrics to train the company’s large language model.
In the Suno blog post, CEO Mikey Shulman wrote: “Today, we are excited to announce we’ve raised $125 million to build a future of music where technology amplifies, rather than replaces, our most precious resource: human creativity.”
“We released our first product eight months ago, enabling anyone to make a song with just a simple idea,” he continued. “It’s very early days, but 10 million people have already made music using Suno. While GRAMMY-winning artists use Suno, our core user base consists of everyday people making music — often for the first time.
“We’ve seen producers crate digging, friends exchanging memes and streamers co-creating songs with stadium-sized audiences. We’ve helped an artist who lost his voice bring his lyrics back to life again after decades on the sidelines. We’ve seen teachers ignite their students’ imaginations by transforming lessons into lyrics and stories into songs. Just this past weekend, we received heartwarming stories of mothers moved to tears by songs their loved ones created for them with a little help from Suno.”