Reports: BMG

The music catalogue acquisition market bounced back from a slightly cooled 2023 with a new fever in 2024. What is being bought is changing, however, as investors look to diversify their portfolios and uncover new growth pockets in an increasingly crowded market.

With five successive years of growth, the recorded music market has transitioned from a recovering industry into a thriving business. The stars are aligning, with growing consumer demand, business model innovation, a golden era for independent artists and surging interest from institutional investors.

The effects of music streaming having supplanted both the download and the CD as the mainstream format for recorded music (accounting for 50% of total recorded revenue in 2018) are being keenly felt across the music publishing industry. The DNA of streaming consumption (playlists, lower mechanical royalties, less revenue on average for superstar catalogue) has firmly shifted the goal posts in market influence, meaning the position to drive the overall publishing market is increasingly up for grabs.

This report, a first from MIDiA dedicated to the music publishing space, addresses the most important trends in the industry. With 2018 seeing revenues continue their accelerated growth and music publishing emerging as an asset class, now is opportune to reflect on one of the often misunderstood and hence undervalued aspects of the recorded music industry.

This report, a first from MIDiA dedicated to the music publishing space, addresses the most important trends in the industry. With 2018 seeing revenues continue their accelerated growth and music publishing emerging as an asset class, now is opportune to reflect on one of the often misunderstood and hence undervalued aspects of the recorded music industry.

Music publishing mergers and acquisitions have boomed in recent years, invigorated by streaming’s user growth and the multitude of revenue options becoming available outside of music sales, such as micro syncs afford by user generated content (UGC) on YouTube and the steep growth of podcasts.

Marketing is one of the core competencies of record labels. The rise of the internet and social media transformed label marketing strategies. Now streaming is turning everything upside down again. The new challenge this time round is that streaming is both a marketing tool and a revenue source.

Everything starts with the song yet music publishers have often been the last part of the digital equation. Relative insulation from the effects of declining music sales have enabled publishers to have a far less digital centric worldview than record labels.