“The average earnings are not going up by multiples over a five-year period of time,” said music publishing veteran Matt Pincus. Michael Jackson paid $47.5 million in 1985 for ATV Music, home to Beatles classics including “Help” and “Yesterday,” and later merged it with Sony Music Publishing. The surging growth of the recorded music business, thanks to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, has made music catalogs hot properties once again. While the prices of some deals have shocked analysts, those may be more rational than the ones happening in music, according to Pincus, who sold his Songs Music Publishing to Kobalt Capital in 2017. But while the music industry is riding high right now, Werde said it’s not a bubble.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 15, 2022 23:41 UTC