Over the past three years, Billboard estimates that the revenue generated by Sean “Diddy” Combs’ master recording catalog, as well as the publishing for songs he wrote that appear on his albums, reached about $3 million annually.
The biggest asset he has in his favor — and not included in the above estimate — is his ownership of Bad Boy Records, through which he owns his own masters and publishing.
But the activity generated by his own artist catalog — an average of about 147,000 album consumption units each year over the past three years — is not particularly large for someone generally regarded as a superstar. And even setting aside his current circumstances — several lawsuits alleging sexual assault; a video published by CNN showing him physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie in 2016, a situation that was included in her own since-settled lawsuit against him last fall; and a reported federal sex trafficking investigation, among other things — the catalog is a challenge for music-asset traders who would consider purchasing it.
One reason, in addition to the public accusations, is that his catalog is not out under a single, identifiable brand like most artists’ catalogs are — it has been put out under five main artist names: Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy & the Family, P. Diddy, Diddy and Diddy-Dirty Money. That makes it harder to market, music industry executives say. To further confuse matters, in 2017 he decided he would henceforth be known as Love, or Brother Love, under which he released his last album, Off The Grid, though neither name appears to be connected with any Combs music activity in Luminate’s database.
Confusingly, that most recent album, Off The Grid, technically released under the name Diddy, was credited with 453,000 units in 2023, according to Billboard’s math based on Luminate’s data from the weekly Billboard 200 chart. However, the songs with the most activity on those albums are collaborations, like “Creepin’” — a remix credited to The Weeknd, Metro Boomin and 21 Savage that seems to capture all of the song’s streams, not just the Diddy remix. Consequently, those streams aren’t counted on his artist page, which only gives Diddy credit for 97,000 album consumption units in 2023 for all his albums, including Off The Grid, put out under the Diddy handle.
Given the lower-than-expected activity and sales volume of his catalog, Billboard estimates the combined Combs catalog brings in about $2.4 million in master recording revenue; while his publishing catalog, which has an extensive list of co-writers, generates about $600,000 annually for Diddy. Given all of his co-writers, his share of the publishing generated by his own albums is probably about $225,000. Combined, that comes to about $2.625 million per year, and at a blended 16-times multiple — a rate at which many high-profile catalogs have sold in recent years — that would put Diddy’s artist catalog’s worth at about $42 million.
Reps for Diddy did not respond to a request for comment.
There are several caveats to that assessment — chief among them that Diddy was, for years, also a prolific producer for many of the artists on the Bad Boy label, and that the master recordings he owns by other artists are likely still desirable for music investors. However, in September 2023, he announced that he was reassigning the publishing rights he owned back to the songwriters and artists who helped build Bad Boy, including Ma$e, Faith Evans, the LOX, 112, and the estate of the Notorious B.I.G.
According to that story, Combs had turned down offers to sell that publishing catalog. While most of those writers were eligible to terminate and reclaim their publishing at the 35-year mark, that is only for American publishing rights, not global, which Combs otherwise would have continued to own under U.S. law. What happened to those global rights is still unknown.
But overall, given all the other artists he has worked with, his ownership of the Bad Boy master recordings catalog provides considerable income and possibly a potential valuation far beyond the estimates cited above for his own master recording catalog.
