Charles “CJ” Johnson has a rare vantage point on how money flows in the music rights business.
As Head of Entertainment Investment Banking at Truist Securities, he and his team have been involved in financing for Kobalt, Litmus Music, Lyric Capital, Influence Media Partners, and Create Music Group.
Truist was left-lead arranger on Kobalt’s USD $450 million revolving credit facility and joint bookrunner on the publisher’s $266.5 million asset-backed securitization in 2024, two years before Primary Wave agreed to buy the company. Truist was also left-lead arranger and lead bookrunner when Litmus Music’s revolving credit facility was upsized from $250 million to $400 million in July 2024 – money Litmus used to buy Opus Music Group.
And this July, it led the debt financing and acted as financial advisor to Influence Media Partners on its $600 million-plus deal to buy Anthem Entertainment’s catalogs, which is due to close in Q4.
Truist’s entertainment investment banking practice dates to 2009, and, as Johnson noted on the bank’s Navigating Beyond the Expected podcast, its private wealth sports and entertainment arm goes back four decades, at one point trading under the name the Official Bank of Music.
All of which gives Johnson a particular read on a year that has substantially reorganized the independent sector. Primary Wave’s acquisition of Kobalt, the BMG–Concord merger, and Sony Music Publishing’s purchase of the catalog of Blackstone-owned Recognition Music Group were all announced within 50 days of each other this spring.
Here, Johnson discusses catalog multiples, AI licensing as a revenue stream rather than a threat, and more…
What’s your general sentiment on the catalog market today?
The market remains active with intense competition at the top and discipline displayed on the lower end. Iconic catalogs have stabilized in the mid to high teens with no return to the 2021 peak.
Demonstrating this pattern, three market-restructuring deals landed within a tight 50-day window this year. Sony’s purchase of Recognition Music Group’s [catalog], the BMG–Concord merger, and Primary Wave’s acquisition of Kobalt were together worth more than $19 billion.
“Today, that mismatch – not interest rates – is where deals are breaking down.”
Financial sponsors remain interested in this asset class, particularly when a potential acquisition involves an iconic catalog that adds or creates scale. The key bid-ask gap is not about the multiple itself, but whose multiple applies. Broad-market publishing catalogs more than 10 years old typically clear at roughly 12 times, while truly iconic assets trade at premiums of 50% or more. Sellers often anchor to iconic-tier headline valuations, even though most assets do not qualify for that tier. Today, that mismatch – not interest rates – is where deals are breaking down.
What trends are you seeing today that will define the music investment market over the next few years?
Three trends really stand out to me, starting with concentration. By 2027, the three majors plus a combined BMG-Concord are expected to control roughly 75% of the publishing market.
Second, geographic rotation: growth is shifting away from markets in the U.S. and Western Europe toward India, South Korea, Latin America, and the Gulf. Many conventional underwriting models still do not fully account for these regions.
Third, AI licensing has emerged as a real, though still unproven, revenue stream rather than simply a threat.
A lot of the iconic catalogs have already changed hands, some more than once. Are there enough iconic copyrights left to sustain the level of investor appetite we’re seeing?
Given the number of companies that traded in 2026, it may appear that investor focus has shifted from catalogs to operating platforms. Even so, we continue to see interest in the $5 million to $50 million purchase price range, where many new entrants are targeting the middle market.
“New music is created every day, and within it are songs, songwriters, and artists that may one day become iconic.”
I often speak with prospective investors who ask whether they are too late to enter the space. My response is that new music is created every day, and within it are songs, songwriters, and artists that may one day become iconic.
What impact will AI have on the long-term value of evergreen copyrights?
Over the past year, AI has been reframed from an existential threat to a licensing opportunity. Several major music companies have recently settled copyright disputes with AI platforms and entered into licensing agreements for new AI music models. Still, the impact on valuations won’t be evenly applied across the industry.
AI training and licensing income is largely a scale-driven payment stream that favors platforms with large, rights-verified catalogs over individual artists or smaller catalogs. At the same time, AI-generated supply is flooding the low end of streaming and diluting per-stream economics for less-differentiated content. That dynamic makes evergreen copyrights with genuine cultural attachment relatively scarcer and supports an iconic-tier premium.
“AI-generated supply is flooding the low end of streaming and diluting per-stream economics for less-differentiated content.”
The caveat is that no durable, disclosed rate card for AI training income exists yet, so treating it as a forecast line rather than optionality could be a mistake in this cycle.
What’s your take on how the public markets value music companies versus private buyers?
Public and private markets can tell very different valuation stories, even though the industry often compares them directly.
We’ve seen recently how publicly traded music companies can trade at lower multiples, while high-quality catalogs can command significantly higher multiples in private transactions. Public-market multiples can also shift quickly, particularly when earnings or key growth metrics fall short of investor expectations. The gap is rational.
Catalog multiples reflect relatively predictable, low-overhead royalty streams that function more like bonds with upside. While public label multiples value operating businesses exposed to A&R risk, marketing spend, and quarterly disclosure pressure.
In other words, public markets are pricing the quarter, not the catalog. That disconnect is also helping drive the 2026 consolidation wave, as strategic buyers can effectively acquire listed platforms at valuations below the implied value of their underlying music rights.
How is catalog decay being modeled now versus a few years ago, and are older deals holding up?
How catalog decay is modeled has changed quite a bit in recent years, and some older deals are now holding up better than buyers initially expected. Decay modeling has gone from a single, blended assumption to a central part of how catalogs are underwritten.
Buyers now look more closely at the age of the catalog and how its revenue has held up over time, often putting more weight on those factors than on genre or an artist’s name. Across both master recordings and publishing rights, older, more established catalogs generally command higher multiples because their earnings are more proven.
“Buyers now look more closely at the age of the catalog and how its revenue has held up over time, often putting more weight on those factors than on genre or an artist’s name.”
Revenue concentration also matters. A catalog where most of the revenue comes from a few songs is going to be viewed as riskier than one with a broader base of earnings.
What’s interesting is that some older deals are performing better than expected. Ratings across a number of music royalty transactions have remained stable, although debt-service coverage has come down in some cases.
However, the broader takeaway is that the underlying assets have largely performed in line with the decay curves.
Beyond publishing catalogs, where else is capital flowing in music right now, and which of those areas do you think is most underestimated?
I’m seeing a lot of financial sponsor interest in what I would describe as the infrastructure that supports the music ecosystem. Think royalty accounting firms, distribution platforms, data and analytics. These opportunities align more with traditional private equity returns than catalog acquisitions.
If you could change one thing about the music business right here and now, what would it be and why?
I think we could benefit from standardizing and speeding up royalty reporting and data transparency across the industry. The entire catalog asset class is underwritten off statements that are slow, inconsistent, and difficult to audit across territories and rights types. Every other multi-billion-dollar asset class has standardized reporting.
Fixing this would narrow the bid-ask spread, lower diligence costs, and, importantly, benefit smaller sellers and independent songwriters, who are least equipped to fight opaque statements today. It’s a change that helps artists and investors at the same time, which is rare in this business.
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