Higher interest rates, rising costs for raising capital and paying off debt: All of these developments are affecting the music rights market as well.

The prices for coveted catalogs are unlikely to be at the level they were months ago.

Hartwig Masuch, head of Bertelsmann's music division BMG, also referred to this at the end of July.

“Irrational sums” have sometimes been called up in the past boom months.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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Low interest rates and the accompanying crowd of big names from the financial world such as KKR, Blackrock, Blackstone and Apollo, who have (again) become aware of the field and are competing with the established giants from the music industry, are two reasons for the recent expensive catalogue -Run.

The reason for this is that rights to popular songs promise constant and potentially growing income primarily through streaming and the abundance of further and constantly growing marketing opportunities - from Tiktok to Peloton, series, films or video games to the Metaverse.

In contrast to the financial framework, nothing has changed in this regard and consequently in the fundamental attraction of catalogues.

Of course, there are signs of slower streaming growth in established markets.

Genesis deal for hundreds of millions of dollars

As a result, there is still interest in rights packages.

Although some people apparently no longer find music quite as attractive under the new framework conditions or have difficulties with financing.

In principle, BMG makes weekly deals that another buyer had previously negotiated, Masuch said in July.

Packages of rights to the work of Simple Minds or the author's rights of the French electro pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre have recently been added to the portfolio.

Various other purchases were not publicly announced, an aspect that is characteristic of the industry.

Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, respectively, and the US music company Concord Music, which acquired a rights package from the Genesis trio that is believed to be worth more than $300 million, took a different view.

And while a possible sale of rights from Pink Floyd – and if it were to be carried out also very expensive – is still pending, things are happily continuing elsewhere.

In early September, private equity house Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in indie publisher Kobalt Music and its collecting society AMRA for around $750 million, according to reports.

Another player in the fight for catalogs that has been very busy for years now also has a new financially strong partner from the financial world: the Canadian financial investor Brookfield Asset Management, which claims to have more than 750 billion dollars in assets under management, is acquiring one, according to a statement on Thursday "significant minority stake" in US indie publisher Primary Wave.

Brookfield breaks new ground in the music world.

In the course of this, a new, long-term fund for the purchase of music rights, worth 1.7 billion dollars, is also to be launched.

The catalogs of rights from two existing primary funds, valued at more than 700 million dollars, are to be included in the new fund.

Overall, the deal is valued at around $2 billion, it said.