Introducing: Duetti and Billboard’s Music Finance Index

Even the youngest music publishing catalogs are landing valuations of up to 9.8 times net revenue, with Latin music catalogs expected to be among the most in-demand, according to a new survey of independent sell-side parties released Monday by the catalog investment firm Duetti.

Called the Music Finance Index, the report is a semiannual study polling independent artists, managers, lawyers and their teams about their impressions of the current market for music catalog valuations and investor interest. The study was the result of a collaboration with Billboard, which contributed to shaping the survey questions and sourcing contributors for the nearly 60-person panel. The report can be viewed in full on Duetti’s website.

Founded in 2022, Duetti is one of the world’s most active acquirers of music rights, working with more than 1,000 indie artists, songwriters and creators to date on acquisitions typically valued at between $10,000 and $10 million. Its focus on music’s massive middle market makes Duetti well positioned to survey the creators and their teams about how they see market conditions, the company says.

“The Index’s goal is to increase transparency in a historically opaque market and share insights and perspectives, which we hope will empower music creators to make the best financial and catalog management decisions for themselves,” Duetti CEO Lior Tibon says.

Much of the first survey focuses on catalog valuation defined as the price paid for a catalog relative to its trailing 12-month net revenue, although Tibon acknowledges multiples are considered in a basket of factors to determine a catalog’s price tag.

“This first edition is not intended to reduce valuation to a single number, but to create a consistent lens for tracking how these perceptions evolve, why they may be shifting, and how expectations shift over time,” Tibon says.

The Index results were analyzed blindly without knowing what specific respondents answered, and Duetti’s methodology included analysts’ best practices, such as data standardization and clean up, and summarizing all responses based on descriptive measures like means and standard deviations, and percentage mix of answers, depending on the question.

Catalog Multiples

The Index found that catalogs of music rights that are between two and five years of age can fetch a price ranging from 3.5 to 9.5 times its trailing 12-month net revenue for master recording rights and 3.2 to 9.8-times trailing 12-month net revenue for publishing rights.

For catalogs aged five to 10 years, the price can range from 5.7 to 12.5 times revenue for masters and 6.1 to 13.9 times revenue for publishing. Index panelists said the catalogs that have the greatest variability in price contain master rights to songs older than 10 years, with those rights fetching anywhere from 5.8 times revenue to as much as an 18.8 times revenue multiple. Publishing rights for catalogs of songs older than 10 years ranged from 8.7 times multiple to 19.9 times.

Everyone Loves the Latin Genre

“Latin is the clear No. 1 genre in terms of expected growth in deal activity … 71% of respondents expect Latin deal volume to increase, versus just 4% expecting a decrease,” the survey found.

Panelists also expect that pop and country will see greater deal volume in the first half of the year, with 55% expecting more pop catalog deals and 52% expecting more country deals. Notably, 56% of respondents expect more demand for electronic dance music and other dance catalogs, while roughly a third of respondents say they expect significant demand for catalogs in the rock, alternative and indie rock spaces.

“In the Latin market specifically, there’s a noticeable uptick in activity,” one Index panelist stated. “More deals, more buyers and stronger valuations for consistent catalogs. At the same time, many older catalogs from the ’70s, ’80s and early reggaeton era lack proper documentation, which slows down or kills transactions. But the new generation of artists, songwriters and producers is far more organized. Better metadata, better split sheets, better administration. Because of that shift, I expect even more catalog deals on the horizon.”

Future Prediction

The majority of panelists shared that cautious optimism and extended it to valuations. In the latter half of 2025, 77% of panelists said catalog multiples held flat or fell slightly. But in the coming six months, 77% of panelists said they expect multiples to rise slightly or hold flat.

“I’m seeing more discipline from buyers … but strong interest in catalogs under $5 million where the risk profile is clearer and underwriting moves faster,” one respondent wrote. “Overall volume feels steady to increasing, but with more selective capital and a noticeable shift toward smaller, easier to evaluate assets.”

This Index will next be updated in July 2026.