So far, we have watched three heavy hitters from the investment community – Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, and KKR – deciding to cumulatively funnel billions of dollars into music rights acquisition.
The Financial Times reports that Pimco has struck an alliance with BMG to jointly acquire song copyrights.
That alliance follows BMG’s separate pact with KKR – a partnership that recently closed acquisitions of rights from John Legend and ZZ Top.
As Music Business Worldwide reported last year, KKR has a portfolio of assets under its management worth around $234 billion; Apollo Global Management has a portfolio of assets under its management worth around $455 billion; and Blackstone has a portfolio of assets under its management worth $649 billion.
By contrast, US-headquartered Pimco currently has a portfolio of assets with a value that dwarves all three of the aforementioned combined: $2.21 TRILLION.
With PIMCO entering the fray we can certainly see that the investment world post pandemic is certain about the value of streaming driven revenue. It does yield value even if not for the artists themselves.... artists are selling their catalogs to get the value that they should be getting on the streaming. The artist and maybe their children get to enjoy the payout but no future generations will unless the money is properly invested. The company that then owns the catalog enjoys fortune in perpetuity or until they sell.
It's a little depressing to read of all of this intellectual property being snatched up by opaque investment firms but any artists being faced with multimillion dollar payouts has a hard decision on their hands, surely.
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