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Music 4.5 and CMU Trends put the spotlight on the value of music
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 30 June 2017
Rarely a week goes by in the music business news these days without at least one catalogue acquisition, a deal which sees the ownership or control of a set of music rights move from one entity to another.
Often it’s a major player in the music rights business growing its market share by acquiring the catalogue of an independent. But at the same time, in recent years we’ve seen a number of new players start bidding as well, often led by music industry veterans with the backing of a financial institution, usually private equity or a pension fund.
Meanwhile new market places are evolving where smaller rights owners – including individual artists and songwriters – can access investors other than labels and publishers, and raise money by selling a slice of their rights or royalties. But how do investors large and small put a value on music rights?
All of this will be discussed at the next Music 4.5 event called ‘The Value Of Music’, and ahead of that the latest CMU Trends article reviews the music rights market – past, present and future – with insights from EY’s Alan Wallis, SunTrust’s Charles Johnson and music industry consultant Steve Lewis.
The article also puts the spotlight on two of the new music rights market places: Royalty Exchange and LIVAMP.
“Royalty Exchange was set up to be the online marketplace for buying and selling royalties”, the company’s co-founder Gary Young explains. “We’ve worked with songwriters, producers, artists, bands, publishers and record labels. When it comes to what those folks are selling, each auction is a little different. For example, some songwriters will come to us to sell only their public performance royalties from ASCAP. Others will sell their producer royalties paid by a major record label. And some want to sell their entire catalogue and copyrights”.
Meanwhile LIVAMP’s Liz Zavoyskiy says: “We launched LIVAMP’s artist marketplace in late 2015 because we saw a clear gap in the way the creative community financed itself. When the platform first launched, high net worth individuals looking for new, non-traditional investment opportunities were the primary investors. But over time, we’ve begun co-investing in deals and earlier this year joined forces with Magna Entertainment, a large NYC-based investment firm, to commit $100 million to this space over the next couple of years”.
Premium CMU subscribers can read the full CMU Trends article here. The Music 4.5 event ‘The Value Of Music’ takes place next Thursday, 6 Jul, at the London HQ of Lewis Silkin. Info and tickets here.
