Six Secrets To Getting The Best Deal On Your Music Catalog #4: It’s Not All Or Nothing

Why sell your entire catalog when only 20% will do?

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May 13, 2020

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5 min

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Secret #4: It’s Not All Or Nothing

By Gary Young, EVP and co-founder, Royalty Exchange

Most record labels make 80% of their revenue on their top 20% of artists in their roster. The same is true for catalogs. The most popular 20% of the songs in a catalog generate 80% of its earnings. When most people start the catalog sale process… they assume that they have to sell the whole thing. Every song -- cut or uncut, released or unreleased.

Because that’s the way it was traditionally done.

But that didn’t make any sense to us when we started Royalty Exchange. All or nothing deals do you a big disservice. For a few reasons...

They’re asking you to sell every single thing that you’ve created, which can be emotionally painful.
80% of the catalog’s value is probably in just a few songs.

The all-or-nothing buyer is really only paying you for those hit songs that are making money… and they’re getting all other songs (including the potential hits)… for FREE.

That’s crazy. They want you to give away all that potential without taking any of the risk themselves. It just isn’t right.

That’s why we do partial deals all the time. In fact, we prefer them. With us, you could sell the royalties for just a handful of songs to get the money you need. You can even sell the royalties for a handful songs from one source of income.

For example, you have 20 songs in your catalog, but four of them earn most of the money. Those songs earn public performance royalties from BMI, and mechanical and sync royalties from Warner/Chappell.

Depending on your goals, needs, and plans, we could help you sell just the BMI public performance royalties for those four songs, or just the mechanical/sync royalties from Warner/Chappell, or both, while retaining the other 16 songs.

If you want to get even more creative, we could even do a deal for 50% of the royalties from those 4 songs from either source. That way you could keep some royalties coming in and still get a big check to invest.

This is how publishers, labels, and others in the music business view their rosters and catalogs… as assets that they can use in many creative ways. We allow you--the artist--to use the same strategies that have kept publishers and labels in business through the highs and lows of history.

Now, this can be a lot to think about so we put together a free service to help you figure out what the best deal is for you.

We call it 80/20 Catalog.

We’ll collect your statements, identify the top 20% of your earning songs and we’ll show you what kind of money you can get for that small portion of your total catalog. The service is totally free.