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At 28, Canadian pop idol Justin Bieber is making headlines with the sale of his entire publishing catalogue to Hipgnosis Songs Capital in a deal <\/span>reported to be worth $200 million<\/span><\/a>. The purchase covers all 290 titles in his catalogue (as of December 31, 2021).<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s said to be the largest such deal for anyone under pensionable age \u2014 and it\u2019s the biggest deal ever for Hipgnosis.<\/span><\/p>\n He follows a long list of music luminaries, such as <\/span>Glenn Gould<\/span><\/a>, Justin Timberlake, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Bieber\u2019s deal is rare because his catalogue isn\u2019t that old, as compared to many of the musicians and other rights holders who have taken the plunge.<\/span><\/p>\n The artists in question are selling the rights to their work \u2014 in other words, to collect royalties largely from the streaming of their back catalogue. That\u2019s become more and more important as statistics show, people consume more older music than new.<\/span><\/p>\n When Kate Bush\u2019s Running Up That Hill took the world by storm more than 35 years after its original release via Netflix\u2019s Stranger Things TV series, it only accelerated an ongoing phenomenon. About <\/span>70% of the music consumed today<\/span><\/a> is older music, leaving only 30% of the pie for new artists and material. It makes that existing music all the more valuable.<\/span><\/p>\n When a company buys the rights, the revenues from the music in question go into a kind of mutual fund. Investors purchase shares in the fund, and profit when the songs are streamed.<\/span><\/p>\n After investing in yesterday\u2019s catalogues, the next stop is the future \u2014 or rather, a futures index. It would mean that investors could put their money on which songs would become the next streaming stars.<\/span><\/p>\n Chicago-based company <\/span>Clouty<\/span><\/a> \u2014 \u201cat the intersection of data, music and finance, re-imagining the value of music by making it a tradable asset\u201d \u2014 introduced the world\u2019s first music trading index, MUSIQ\u2122, launched in the summer of 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n Because of online streaming, metrics are now readily available to measure and analyze activity in the music sector. It\u2019s led to the next step of the company\u2019s vision, which is the release of the MUSIQ 500 composite index that will track various genres of music and their current market value. The company uses a proprietary method with multiple inputs to calculate the value of the top 500 songs at any given time.<\/span><\/p>\n Clouty is currently looking for an exchange-traded fund to make it easy for investors to jump into the game. Futures could be linked to specific genres, artists or even songs.<\/span><\/p>\n The push to introduce music futures funds follows a couple of years when so-called music funds have been spending billions of dollars on <\/span>acquiring the ripe back catalogues<\/span><\/a> of artists and producers.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat are they selling?<\/b><\/h3>\n
Next stop: the future<\/b><\/h3>\n
More than pop<\/b><\/h3>\n