Finance

JKBX has announced that it has received qualification from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its assets. The result: as of this week, investors – including consumers aka ‘retail investors’ – can legally purchase shares in the royalty streams of hits via JKBX.com. The JKBX platform soft-launched last year, but while awaiting SEC qualification, its users could only ‘reserve’ (rather than outright buy) these royalty shares.

Source: Music royalties trading platform JKBX launches – with regulatory approval from the SEC

The deal sees the company acquiring 50% of Ferry’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights from his solo work and Roxy Music catalog, which reaches back to the group’s galvanizing 1972 debut album and includes such hit songs as “Love Is the Drug,” “More Than This,” “Avalon,” “Virginia Plain,” “Dance Away,” “Slave to Love” and more. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Source: Bryan Ferry Partners With Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists; Company Acquires 50% of Roxy Music Frontman’s Catalog

Madeline McIntosh, Nina von Moltke, and Don Weisberg—most recently at Penguin Random House US and Macmillan, respectively—have joined forces to form a new publishing company. As its name implies, the publisher will operate outside of traditional publishing business models, offering no advances but paying authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model followed by some other types of hybrid publishers.

Source: Three Publishing Veterans Form a New House, Authors Equity

According to an investor update from HSF’s board, Shot Tower estimates the fair value of HSF’s portfolio (as of March 1, 2024) at between USD $1.80 billion and $2.06 billion (or between $1.74 billion and $2.00 billion after contingent catalog bonuses are deducted). According to the HSF board, the midpoint of Shot Tower’s valuation of HSF is $1.93 billion, which represents a reduction in value of 26.3% vs. that $2.62 billion valuation from Citrin Cooperman (as of September 30).

Source: Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s assets are now valued at $690 million less than they were before. Blackstone must be licking its lips.

ASCAP collections grew 14.1% to $1.737 billion in 2023 and payouts to songwriters and publishers increased 14.7% to $1.592 billion, the performance rights organization reported Wednesday (Feb. 28). Those figures represent a record year for ASCAP in both revenue buckets, as well as all-time highs for any U.S. performance rights organization ever, ASCAP claimed.

Source: ASCAP Reports Record Collections, Distribution While Casting Shade on For-Profit Competitors

Streaming has leveled the playing field in many ways since it became the main platform for music around a decade ago, and the fact that independent artists — which Spotify defines as artists signed to a non-major labels or self-releasing — now account for half of that total, for the first time, is evidence. With some 236 million paying subscribers, Spotify remains by far the world’s largest paid music-streaming service, with the U.S. its biggest territory.

Source: Spotify Generated $4.5 Billion for Independent Artists and Labels in 2023