Just as artists are obsessed with attracting audiences, organizations are obsessed with attracting capital. The music industry has seen a decade of revenue growth, attracting outside investment, and you know what? Money talks. These days I see lots of headlines within the entertainment industry about the acceptance of private equity dollars from all kinds of major stakeholders. This week the San Francisco Giants sold 10% ownership of their team to Sixth Street, a private equity group from San Francisco. The MLB franchise, worth around $4 billion, hopes that this cash can be leveraged to upgrade facilities and competitiveness within the league. Sixth Street will add this stake into their already $100-plus billion worth of managed assets. Now, the Giants aren't part of the music industry, but it's headlines like that which made me want to reengage with this topic. Obviously I'm a music creator, not great with money, so take it all with a grain of salt. But it's time we talk about it.

Music Business Worldwide highlighted the top 10 deals within the music business last year. They were all investor-based. The truth is music rights and music companies continue to be more valuable. And music rights as an asset are something that will have a predictable curve of growth to a peak. Then it's something that can continue maturing until a potential resurgence. This type of predictability and potential longevity is something that catalogue managers in the world of music publishing say investors appreciate about music as an asset class. If you keep tabs on the music industry, you've probably seen headlines about catalogue acquisitions. These headlines usually include a big artist and a big dollar figure.

In the early 1900s, with the inception of the record player, the market for songs changed fundamentally. You could now sell a consumer a copy of music. The Victoria Talking-Machine Company in 1904 was offering $4,000 for a song to sell as a record—the early record deal. In 1909, the government passed the first mechanical licensing regulations that ensured the creators behind the song were also compensated for the sale of records. Today's music business, despite its technological evolution, operates on this same foundational framework: A&R representatives still scout for marketable talent, publishers continue to compile and manage catalogs of compositions, and record companies invest in acquiring, producing, and distributing music. What's changed isn't the basic transaction—paying creators for rights to exploit their work—but rather who controls these rights, how they're valued, and the increasingly complex financial vehicles through which they generate returns.

In the last five years, plenty of artists have been cashing in on large deals in exchange for partial or total ownership of song catalogues and publishing rights. In 2023, Justin Bieber sold his catalogue of works up until 2021. This notably includes his smash hit "Baby." Hipgnosis (now "Recognition"), based in London, allegedly paid around $200 million for this acquisition. Not soon after, Hipgnosis, which manages 150 catalogues and thousands of recordings, was bought by Blackstone for over a billion dollars. The Blackstone-backed fund would spend big on catalogues from Justin Timberlake, Leonard Cohen, and Kenny Chesney. The truth is the music industry, which was arguably taken over in the last two decades by the tech giants that control distribution platforms, is now experiencing the financial powerhouses that write undeniable checks for assets in all major industries. Recognition is not the only music rights fund quickly growing their catalogue. Lyric Capital Group in New York reported to now hold over $800 million worth of catalogue. But it isn't just niche music-based funds flying under the radar; Sony Music, one of the largest music industry companies, bought Queen's catalogue for over a billion dollars—the largest deal in catalogue history. This deal allegedly didn't even include the North American rights, still owned by Disney. Now the details of this deal were kept quiet, but anyone can see the appeal for owning the publishing and recorded music rights for Queen. However, Sony Music Entertainment did not front the full bill of this deal. Apollo Global Management funded 700 million of the deal, in a partnership with Sony.

We need to talk about Apollo…

Apollo Global Management has been a major contributor to a few of the largest financial deals in music industry history. I want to touch on their deal with Concord, it's important. To quote their own website home page, "Concord is the world's leading independent music company. The Company supports more than 125,000 artists and songwriters whose works are licensed, marketed, and performed globally. Concord's growing catalog of 1.3 million songs, compositions, sound recordings, films, plays, and musicals is one of the most impactful and culturally relevant collections of creative rights in history." To summarize, they do a lot of just about everything. Their home page doesn't mention Apollo Global Management — maybe it should? Here's why.

Headline:

Building on a longstanding relationship, Apollo supported leading independent music company Concord in October 2024 with an $850 million ABS issuance — the latest of three transactions led by Apollo, including the largest-ever and highest-rated music ABS in history* at $1.8 billion.

Let me break down what this transaction means in simpler terms:

Concord is an independent music company that owns rights to various music catalogs (collections of songs). In October 2024, they worked with Apollo to raise $850 million through something called an "ABS issuance."

ABS stands for "Asset-Backed Securities." Here's how it works:

1. Concord has valuable music rights that generate steady income through royalties (when songs are streamed, played on radio, used in commercials, etc.)
2. Instead of waiting years to collect all this income gradually, Concord packages these future royalty payments into securities (financial instruments) that can be sold to investors
3. Apollo helps structure and sell these securities, essentially converting Concord's future royalty streams into immediate cash
4. Investors who buy these securities will receive portions of the royalty payments over time

The "$1.8 Billion" reference indicates that Apollo previously helped Concord with an even larger transaction of this type - apparently the biggest music-related ABS deal ever.

This approach allows music companies like Concord to access significant capital upfront while maintaining ownership of their catalogs, unlike selling catalogs outright to private equity firms. Investors like these deals because music royalties tend to provide relatively stable returns regardless of economic conditions.

For Concord, this $850 million provides immediate funds they can use to acquire more music rights, invest in their business, or potentially distribute money to their owners.

Long story short, financial institutions are empowering companies with access to large amounts of cash. This also provides a path for capital that doesn't force the rights holders to sell ownership stakes, like what we have seen with private equity firms. This can completely change the aggression and strategy of an organization's operations. But it can also put pressure on their overall philosophy to make sure their catalog performs well and appeals to more investors.

Case Study: Live Nation

But it's not all about rights and publishing. What investment groups are able to do is hold major ownership stakes in companies. Regardless of the investment group's scope, ownership comes with control. Liberty Media Group, for example, owns 30% of Live Nation. Live Nation, since its Ticketmaster merger, dominates the live entertainment ticket and venue ecosystem. The CEO of Liberty acts as Chair of the Live Nation board of directors. Liberty also notably owns Formula One Group, which controls all commercial aspects of F1 motorsports. Since their engagement in Live Nation, LN's overall philosophy has shifted. Let's talk about that.

I am not a fan of the Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly. I will be upfront and say that, but I am not optimistic about any antitrust progress under the new administration. I have read through a decent amount of the bullet points of the lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and I welcome anyone else to as well. https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1353101/dl

One section I’d like to highlight from the lawsuit is as follows:

69. Live Nation’s strategy includes several forms of anticompetitive conduct across

its various intermediary roles that work in harmony to protect Live Nation’s power and keep rivals at bay. For example:

• Live Nation enters into agreements with rivals not only to remove them, but also to cement and expand its dominance.
• Live Nation engages in threats (directly or through intermediaries) and pressure campaigns to nullify rivals or nascent threats.
• Live Nation relies on “carrots and sticks” to induce venues to sign long-term exclusive ticketing contracts that offer durable protection for Ticketmaster’s dominance. Venues have seen that if they sign with a Ticketmaster competitor, they risk losing lucrative Live Nation concerts and may suffer other harmful retaliation.
• Live Nation conditions artists’ access to its vast and desirable network of amphitheaters and other venues on choosing Live Nation as the promoter, which enables the company to expand its control over artists and third-party venues alike.
• Live Nation removes and neutralizes potential competitors and nascent threats via acquisitions, joint ventures, and other contractual agreements.

Point is Live Nation is an aggressive company, that acts very confident in its position. They’re not slowing down. This was part of their latest SEC filing.

Part of this is, of course, the long rollback of live events since the pandemic. It is also driven by Live Nation's continued aggression for more vertical integration and venue control. They plan to add more large venues to their arsenal this year. Much of the conversation around Live Nation has surrounded tickets, which is the consumer-level issue. We've now seen both the Biden and Trump administrations take on the problems surrounding price transparency and price gouging. Truth is, ticketing is the small part of their business. So from a political perspective, it's a pretty easy thing to please the general public without angering the monopoly, which has spent at least a million dollars a year on lobbying in the last 5 years, doubling in the last 2 years according to the Senate Office of Public Records.

I'm going to argue that in many ways, Live Nation itself operates like an Investment Firm. Let's jump in: the real money comes from owning and controlling all aspects of venues. That's where their margins soar. They can control everything — food, drinks, merch vendors, VIP experiences, and sponsorships. When you examine Live Nation's revenue growth, it really stems from operational income and premium offerings. Liberty Live Group, which is Liberty Media Group's Live Nation stock offering, allows investors to invest in that part of their holdings. In their investor presentation, they highlighted that the 20% increase in sponsorships and 20% increase in premium experiences has driven growth. Their goal is to own and operate as many venues as possible. That gives them total leverage over artists and fans. What they like to do is go into a market they do not have stake in, build a large flagship venue, and then buy surrounding small venues with their new market leverage. Take Portland, where Live Nation announced a new Portland Music Hall, a 3,500-seat venue. It's attractive to some business owners in the surrounding area and excites fans. But members of the live music community in Portland worry that it's the beginning of a new regime within the Portland scene, which up to this point has no Live Nation venues.

Like most industries, the big fish can make offerings that competition cannot. This reminds me of Spotify's strategy to take over the music streaming market in India. They came in and offered really lenient free trials to all users and a decreased rate to all first-time subscribers — all priced lower than Gaana, which was the dominant platform. Spotify also has a big advantage as far as catalogue offerings and all their unique customization offerings. There were reports at the time of the rollout that artists and labels would be paid significantly less per stream in that market to compensate for all the free subscriptions. A pretty harsh reality to tolerate if you ask me, considering the scale of users and revenue unlocked by breaking into the Indian market, where users' access to technology will continue to grow for the next decade. Now, there was speculation that at the time Record Companies could block Spotify from the expansion; however, the Record Labels have plenty of stake in Spotify to convince them to justify some sort of "long-term play."

The music industry's transformation through private equity isn't just about billion-dollar headlines — it's fundamentally reshaping the art and business of music in ways that deserve broader discussion. From Liberty Media's influence on Live Nation to massive catalog acquisitions by firms like Blackstone, these financial players are silently rewriting the rules that have governed music for over a century. What began with the Victoria Talking-Machine Company offering $4,000 for songs in 1904 has evolved into complex financial instruments like Concord's $850 million asset-backed securities. Yet the core issues remain the same: to 99% of creators, their work is heavily undervalued. Because of that reality, I want to shed light on all the major dollar amounts that do fly around everyday in this industry. What's changed dramatically is who controls these rights, how they're valued, and who benefits most from them. As investment principles become embedded in industry operations, from dynamic ticket pricing to catalog valuation models, we need to expand our conversations beyond streaming algorithms and playlist placements. The biggest changes in music today aren't happening on stages or in studios, but in boardrooms where financial engineering has become as important as sound engineering. The question isn't whether private equity in music is inherently good or bad, it's whether we understand the profound ways it's reshaping the industry's fundamental relationships. By starting this conversation, we can ensure that artists, fans, and industry professionals have a voice in determining how financial innovation and artistic expression can coexist in tomorrow's music business.