Demand for music royalties has reached an all-time high among investors seeking alternatives to public markets and low-returns.
To help creators, songwriters, performers, and other rightsholders better take advantage of this unprecedented “gold rush” for music catalogs, Royalty Exchange has introduced an expansion of its online marketplace, called The eXchange.
The eXchange combines two of Royalty Exchange’s most popular features into one powerful platform that focuses the demand of the more than 27,000 registered investors into one destination. This includes:
- The popular Secondary Market, where investors relist catalogs acquired on Royalty Exchange to investors.
- The newly added Direct Listings, where rightsholders can publicly list their catalogs at a price they set rather than holding an auction.
In the last three months alone, investors have made over $36 million worth of offers across both the Secondary Market and Direct Listings. The eXchange now captures this collective demand into one destination.
“The eXchange is designed to help creators more easily and quickly tap into investor frenzy for music royalties, while also providing more control and flexibility than they’ve had in the past,” said Royalty Exchange partner Anthony Martini. “This gives ALL creators the ability to benefit from today’s catalog acquisition spree, not just the 1% of artists the big funds focus on.”
The eXchange, gives creators complete control of every stage of the experiences, allowing them to choose:
- Which royalties to make available to investors and which to keep. Artists for instance can list their public performance royalties, but keep their sound recording royalties for themselves.
- How much of their catalog to list. For instance, artists can list just 25% of their chosen royalty income, and continue collecting royalties for the other 75%. Or list anywhere from a single song to an entire catalog.
- Artists can choose to let investors collect royalties only for a specific period of time in return for an upfront payment, after which their royalties will revert back to them no matter what.
- The price they’ll accept. Rather than hoping an auction will end at the price they want, artists can just set the price they want and accept only the best offer that meets or comes closest to their expectations.
In the last five years, Royalty Exchange has facilitated over 1,000 catalog transactions across the marketplace, funneling over $88 million in proceeds to artists, songwriters, and other creators. More than 16,500 new investors joined Royalty Exchange to buy music royalties in 2020, nearly a 70% increase in new accounts over the year prior.
“Creating music is what creates value in the music business, but too often that value is collected by others,” said Martini. “Royalty Exchange is designed to direct that value where it belongs—to the creators—by creating a fair, competitive marketplace. The eXchange funnels the avalanche of investor demand into one easy-to-access platform that gives creators the control they’ve always deserved.”
