When the number three in the music business returned to the stock market in June 2020, Warner Music was initially valued at around $ 12.8 billion.
Today it's more than $ 20 billion.
This underlines that it didn't take too much optimism to keep Universal Music's valuation relatively low ahead of the upcoming IPO.
After all, the prices for individual rights catalogs have also risen enormously in the recent past.
Because music companies are no longer the only ones fighting for lucrative author rights or those in music recordings. Various powerful financial investors have also long been active here. The development is being driven by the assumption that an end to the streaming boom is not in sight, although growth in some established markets is beginning to slow down. Of course, money for the use of music also flows through various other (digital) channels such as playing it on a peloton bike.
The increasingly digital market, on the other hand, offers artists the opportunity to take more into their own hands and thus keep a larger part of the income from their music. The fact that not only a superstar like Drake is still working with Universal to market his music (published on his own label) shows, however, that the top dogs are still in demand as partners - especially number one. That should also apply to investors.