Seventeen music catalogue acquisitions, $537.7 million of purchase price between them, were bought at a weighted 15.5 times the annual net share the rights were earning on the day each deal closed. That number is not an estimate or a market rumour. It is transcribed from a table of price, earnings and multiple that one listed buyer, Reservoir Media, filed with the United States securities regulator on 18 August 2026, deal by deal, with the earnings base printed next to every price.
So when an artist or an estate sells a catalogue, this is what the money part means: the buyer pays roughly fifteen and a half years of the catalogue’s current annual net earnings, once, up front, and keeps every dollar the catalogue earns from then on.
Seventeen acquisitions, ranked by purchase price, largest first. The deals are anonymised in the filing itself: no counterparty, catalogue or territory is named. Source: Reservoir Media investor presentation filed as Exhibit 99.1, 18 August 2026.
Show the numbers
| Deal | Multiple at close |
|---|---|
| Deal 16 | $18.70 |
| Deal 01 | $18.30 |
| Deal 02 | $18.10 |
| Deal 12 | $18.10 |
| Deal 11 | $17.70 |
| Deal 03 | $17 |
| Deal 17 | $16.10 |
| Deal 08 | $15 |
| Deal 04 | $14.40 |
| Deal 15 | $14.30 |
| Deal 10 | $13.40 |
| Deal 07 | $13.30 |
| Deal 14 | $13.20 |
| Deal 06 | $12.40 |
| Deal 13 | $11.10 |
| Deal 05 | $10.40 |
| Deal 09 | $10.10 |
Source: Reservoir Media, Inc. investor presentation filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as Exhibit 99.1, 18 August 2026, slide titled "Value Enhancement Leads To Bought-Down Multiples", retrieved 4 Nov 2026 · download the data
What does selling a music catalogue mean?#
In structure, it usually means selling a company rather than a list of songs, and this desk has counted that separately: of the African-linked deals verified here, most were changes of corporate control, and only two were a named catalogue changing hands. This piece is the other half of the question. Not what moves, but what it costs.
In money, a catalogue sale is the exchange of a future income stream for a present lump sum, and the exchange rate is a multiple. The buyer looks at what the rights paid their owner over the last twelve months, after the collection societies, the sub-publishers and the distributors have taken their cuts, and offers a number of times that figure. Across these 17 deals the multiple ranged from 10.1 times at the cheapest to 18.7 times at the dearest, with a median of 14.4 times and an unweighted mean of 14.8 times. Weighting by capital deployed, which is how the filing itself presents it, gives 15.5 times.
The base matters more than the multiple, and it is where most artists misread their own position. The figure being multiplied is net publisher share or net label share: the money that actually reaches the rights owner’s account, not gross streaming revenue and not the headline royalty on a statement. A songwriter looking at $100,000 of gross collections and applying 15.5 times to it is pricing a catalogue they do not own.
What a catalogue fetches at these multiples#
Run the measured multiples down a column of earnings levels and the arithmetic is unforgiving in both directions.
| # | Annual net share to the owner, USD | Price at 10.1x (lowest observed) | Price at 14.4x (median observed) | Price at 18.7x (highest observed) | Inside the measured population? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $10,000 | $101,000 | $144,000 | $187,000 | No, far below the $9,500,000 floor |
| 2 | $25,000 | $252,500 | $360,000 | $467,500 | No, far below the $9,500,000 floor |
| 3 | $50,000 | $505,000 | $720,000 | $935,000 | No, far below the $9,500,000 floor |
| 4 | $100,000 | $1.01m | $1.44m | $1.87m | No, below the $9,500,000 floor |
| 5 | $250,000 | $2.53m | $3.6m | $4.68m | No, below the $9,500,000 floor |
| 6 | $500,000 | $5.05m | $7.2m | $9.35m | Only at the top of the range, and only just |
Source: Computed from the multiple range in this desk's reservoir-disclosed-catalogue-acquisition-multiples dataset, applied to illustrative earnings levels, retrieved 4 Nov 2026 · download the data
At the median multiple, $50,000 a year of net share is a $720,000 catalogue and $250,000 a year is a $3,600,000 one. The right-hand column is the warning. Every one of those rows sits below the floor of the population the multiples were measured on, because the filing states its own population filter: transactions of at least $9.5 million in value, more than twelve months old, and not predominantly young assets expected to decay at the time of closing. The smallest deal in the table cost $9.5 million against $500,000 of annual net share. Nothing here measures what a $50,000-a-year catalogue trades at, because no deal that size is in the sample.
What the buyer expects to happen next#
The same filing recomputes every multiple against fiscal-year-2026 earnings, and that is the most informative column in it. Annual net share across the 17 catalogues rose from $36.3 million at close to $53.4 million, which drags the weighted multiple down from 15.5 times to 11.6 times, a reduction of 3.9 times. In the buyer’s framing that is value creation. Read from the seller’s side it is a statement that the assets were bought cheaper than they looked, because the earnings being multiplied were about to grow.
The direction was not uniform. Counted across the 17, annual net share rose on 12 catalogues, fell on 2 and was unchanged on 3. The deal that closed in 2019 for $51.7 million was earning $3.6 million a year then and $10.1 million in fiscal 2026, so a 14.4 times purchase is now a 5.1 times one. The deal that closed in 2025 for $20.2 million went the other way: bought at 10.1 times, it is now a 13.4 times asset, because its earnings fell. Catalogue income is not a bond coupon, and the two that fell are the reason a buyer prices in a discount for the possibility that yours is one of them.
Timing also moved the price. The four deals that closed between 2012 and 2019, $141.6 million of capital, went at a weighted 12.4 times. The 13 that closed from 2020 to 2025, $396.1 million, went at 16.6 times. Whatever a seller reads about record catalogue prices, the market this buyer transacted in repriced upward by roughly a third between the two periods, and the long amortisation the buyer applies, 26.7 years on catalogues bought in the quarter to 30 June 2026, says it expects to be collecting long after the multiple is repaid.
The counter-reading#
The obvious objection is concentration: the largest deal is nearly a fifth of the capital in the table, so is the 15.5 times really one transaction wearing a trend costume? Recomputing the weighted multiple with rows removed answers it directly.
| # | Scenario | Deals | Purchase price in scenario, USD m | Weighted multiple at close | Change vs all 17, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All 17 disclosed deals | 17 | 537.70 | 15.50 | 0 |
| 2 | Largest deal removed | 16 | 436.40 | 14.80 | -4.20 |
| 3 | Two largest removed | 15 | 361.50 | 14.10 | -8.60 |
| 4 | Three largest removed | 14 | 298.30 | 13.50 | -12.50 |
| 5 | Five largest removed | 12 | 199.40 | 14.10 | -9.20 |
| 6 | Five smallest removed | 12 | 483.50 | 15.60 | 0.7 |
| 7 | Highest-multiple deal removed | 16 | 527.70 | 15.40 | -0.4 |
| 8 | Lowest-multiple deal removed | 16 | 517.50 | 15.70 | 1.40 |
Source: Recomputed by this desk from its own reservoir-disclosed-catalogue-acquisition-multiples dataset, retrieved 4 Nov 2026 · download the data
No single deal moves the weighted multiple by more than 4.2 per cent. Removing the three largest, which takes nearly half the capital out, moves it from 15.5 times to 13.5 times, a fall of 12.5 per cent. Removing the single highest-multiple deal moves it 0.4 per cent. This is the rare finding on this desk that is not carried by one row, and the capital-concentration check is in the dataset registry alongside it for anyone who wants the sums rather than the ratios.
| # | Scenario | Rows | Total | Mean | Largest row share, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All rows | $17 | $537.70 | $31.63 | $18.84 |
| 2 | Excluding the top 1 (Deal 01) | $16 | $436.40 | $27.28 | $17.16 |
| 3 | Excluding the top 3 (Deal 01, Deal 02, Deal 03) | $14 | $298.30 | $21.31 | $17.33 |
| 4 | Excluding the top 5 (Deal 01, Deal 02, Deal 03, Deal 04, Deal 05) | $12 | $199.40 | $16.62 | $15.45 |
Source: Recomputed from reservoir-disclosed-catalogue-acquisition-multiples, retrieved 4 Nov 2026 · download the data
The serious objections are elsewhere, and three of them stand. First, this is one buyer. An independent publisher with 17 disclosed deals is not the catalogue market, and a different acquirer with a different cost of capital would price differently. Second, and this is the hole in the table rather than a quibble about it, the 17 deals account for $537.7 million of the $995 million the same filing says this buyer has deployed on acquisitions of catalogues and companies since inception. That is 54.0 per cent. Nearly half the capital is outside the disclosure, and the filing’s three stated exclusions, deals under $9.5 million, deals less than twelve months old, and holdings that contained predominantly young assets expected to decay, all point the same way: the deals most likely to have disappointed are the ones not shown. Treat the FY2026 column, and probably the entry multiples too, as a best case. Third, the earnings base is the buyer’s own definition of net share, unaudited at the deal level and rounded to one decimal place in millions, which is why dividing a published price by a published earnings figure reproduces each multiple only to within that rounding.
The one African catalogue the same buyer put a number on#
Reservoir owns rights across Africa and the Middle East, including the South African publishing catalogue of Lebo M, and a Cairo label. That purchase is one of the two African transactions in this desk’s verified deal record that were genuinely a named catalogue changing hands, and both disclosed no price at all. So Lebo M’s catalogue cannot be put on the chart above: no price, no earnings base, no multiple. Exactly one African and MENA catalogue in the buyer’s filings carries a number, and it is small.
| # | Allocation line | USD | Share of total consideration, % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Recorded music catalogue (fair value) | $551,750 | $9.40 |
| 2 | Music distribution customer relationships | $1.47m | $25 |
| 3 | Mobile carrier distribution agreements | $1.35m | $23 |
| 4 | Royalty advances | $1.53m | $26 |
| 5 | Goodwill | $870,445 | $14.80 |
| 6 | Cash and cash equivalents | $340,119 | $5.80 |
| 7 | Other current assets | $491,394 | $8.30 |
| 8 | Property and equipment | $133,590 | $2.30 |
| 9 | Current liabilities assumed | $-550,120 | $-9.30 |
| 10 | Deferred tax liability | $-302,271 | $-5.10 |
| 11 | Total consideration | $5.89m | $100 |
Source: Reservoir Media, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Note 5, Acquisitions: purchase price allocation for the Viral Wave acquisition, closed 7 April 2026, retrieved 4 Nov 2026 · download the data
The April 2026 purchase of the Dubai distributor Viral Wave cost $5,892,734. Of that, the recorded music catalogue was fair-valued at $551,750, which is 9.4 per cent of the consideration. The distribution customer book and the mobile carrier agreements were together worth more than five times the recordings. And critically, the filing discloses no revenue for that catalogue, so no multiple can be computed from it. The only African-region catalogue price in the public record cannot be turned into a multiple at all.
What this means for African artists and independent labels#
Three things you can act on. Work out your own net share before you entertain an offer: twelve months of what actually landed in your account, not twelve months of gross collections, because that smaller number is the one a buyer multiplies. Then apply the measured range rather than a headline: 10.1 to 18.7 times, with the median at 14.4 times, is the whole observed spread, and a buyer quoting you a multiple at the bottom of it is inside normal practice, not insulting you.
Second, understand that you are almost certainly outside the population these numbers come from. Clearing the $9.5 million floor that defines this sample would take around $500,000 a year of net share at the highest multiple ever paid here. Very few African catalogues are there. The multiple that applies below that floor is not merely lower, it is unobserved, and anyone quoting you a market rate for a small catalogue is quoting something no filing has published.
Third, the FY2026 column is your negotiating argument. The buyer’s own disclosure shows net share across these catalogues rising 47.1 per cent from close to fiscal 2026. If your catalogue is growing, a multiple of trailing twelve months hands that growth to the buyer, which is the point of the deal from their side and the cost of it from yours.
