Older music catalog multiples, a key metric in valuing copyrights, have held steady for the past three years, even as the market for investing in music royalties continues to grow, according to a new report from Citrin Cooperman.
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Citrin says its music and entertainment valuation services group priced 566 catalogs that were worth nearly $13 billion combined in 2025, up from 557 catalogs valued at a total of $10.7 billion in 2024. Last year saw some star-studded deals, from Taylor Swift buying her Big Machine masters, to Primary Wave’s acquisition of a stake in Notorious B.I.G.’s catalog, to BMG’s $250 million of Jason Aldean and other select artists’ works.
More valuable publishing catalogs and hip-hop catalogs changed hands last year, and Christian music catalogs began to get greater investor attention, according to Citrin’s findings.
“Citrin Cooperman has reached such a large volume of catalog reviews that we actually have a representative view of how the market is getting structured,” Barry Massarsky, partner and head of Citrin Cooperman’s music and entertainment valuation services practice.
We sat down with Massarsky and Jake DeVries, a partner in Citrin’s music and entertainment valuation services practice, to walk us through the highlights of their 2025 work.
In 2024, the average deal size for a catalog Citrin valued was around $19 million. In 2025, it rose to nearly $23 million. What accounts for the increase?
Jake DeVries: It speaks to there having been some significant, valuable catalogs and publishing specific ones that transacted last year.
In 2025, 41% of the total combined value of the catalogs you valued came from publishing rights only catalogs, compared to about 40% of the pie coming from catalogs that had a mix of publishing and masters rights. With more revenue coming from streaming — and master royalties benefitting more from that income stream — did more publishing rights trade hands last year because people are holding on to the masters rights?
DeVries: It’s likely just a function of [deal] availability. There were some outsized publishing catalogs that had transacted last year that elevated its overall share. We agree that the rise of streaming comprising a larger share of overall recorded music revenue does contribute to masters becoming more valuable. I’m not sure there was less activity among masters rights [because of that]. There was a healthy amount of activity.
Citrin found catalog multiples have basically held steady for three years for older music. Masters catalogs and catalogs of masters and publishing rights traded at more than a 17x multiple, and publishing right traded at around 15x multiples. However, the average multiple for younger masters catalogs was 13.7x, slightly lower than in 2024. Why is that?
DeVries: Multiples on younger vintage material are incredibly sensitive to how old or young that material is. Something that is three years old is very different than something that’s six and nine. Multiples tend to move up as material ages, since as the music matures, the cash flow that’s expected to decay stabilizes. [Catalog transactions of material] five years and younger pulled it down.
In 2025 compared to 2024, multiples for younger vintage masters actually declined year-over-year, and that goes back to hip-hop. We saw a lot of activity in transactions of younger vintage hip-hop catalogs. However, we saw an increase in multiples for the younger vintage publishing catalogs and younger vintage masters and publishing catalogs. That’s a function of that material being one year older.
You point out that there was a lot of hip-hop catalogs transacted last year, but you also found an uptick in rock catalogs trading. What explains that increase in activity?
DeVries: Pop, hip-hop and rock — those are just the broadest genres that have U.S. and ex-U.S. appeal. Those genres have a lot of streaming activity, but also a lot of activity on traditional sources, like radio. They line up well with broader, generalist-types of investor strategies. Overall, we saw more activity in those broad-based, better understood, types of genres.
Barry Massarsky: Those formats also tend to be well-represented by business managers and lawyers. They do tend to spur the demand for that music, as well as putting it out there for market attention. Opportunistic, better educated stakeholders.
Did you find any surprises in the trends and data from your 2025 catalog valuations?
DeVries: It’s interesting how 2000s music performed as well as it did in the most recent year, against strong growth across all well-established release year cohorts. We found that that was an interesting development. It could just be the case that there was more virality in 2000s material than other than other [decades]. There’s been a lot of Goo Goo Dolls.
