Music Catalogs: Is There Ever A Good Time to Sell?

Summary

Trapital Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: Trapital
Host: Dan Runcie
Episode Title: Music Catalogs: Is There Ever A Good Time to Sell?
Date: May 5, 2026
Guest: Josh Grus (Founder, Roundhill Music)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Runcie explores the perennial question: Is there ever a “right” time to sell a music catalog? Using the Motown sale as a cautionary tale, the discussion delves into how the value of music assets changes over decades, the evolution of the music-rights marketplace, and whether the mantra “never sell your publishing” stands the test of time. Guest Josh Grus, with deep experience investing in music rights, shares war stories, missed opportunities, and the tricky balancing act between protecting downside and betting on enduring hits.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Motown as a Case Study

(00:07–04:59)

• The 1988 sale of Motown for $61M seemed reasonable at the time, but future deals showed how timing can dramatically impact outcomes.
• Five years after Berry Gordy’s sale, Motown was flipped for $325M; its publishing (Jobette) followed a similar upward trajectory.
• Dan frames the big question:

  “Is there ever a right time to sell a music catalog? Because, at any given moment, selling can look rational. But over time, great music keeps finding new formats, new business models, and new buyers.” (Dan Runcie, 03:13)

The Cycles of Catalog Sales

(05:40–07:21)

• Music-rights transactions have come in waves:
  • Late '70s (disco & vinyl era)
  • Late '90s (CD boom)
  • Late 2010s–early 2020s (streaming, low rates)
  • 2024–2026 (asset class now “validated” even amid higher rates)
• Josh agrees with the cyclical view, referencing the industry mantra:

  “Never sell your publishing, don’t sell your publishing. It’s like a mantra that’s existed in our industry for a while… It’s something that holds its value.” (Josh Grus, 06:46)

Why Hold? The Long Game of Music Rights

(07:21–08:40)

• Josh and Dan agree: Music catalogs reward patience; values often grow tremendously over decades.
• “These investments have to be measured in decades, not years.” (Josh Grus, 07:21)
• Holding would have been a winning move in most historic cases.

Early Days at Roundhill: The Risk and Opportunity

(08:05–09:37)

• When Roundhill began (2010), the field was uncrowded, streaming didn’t exist in the US, and piracy issues caused real worry.
• Josh recalls:

  “There was a lot of muscle behind the anti-copyright movement… That was scary for anyone in our business.” (Josh Grus, 08:05)

• With little competition, early deals could be had for far less than their future value.

Missed Opportunities: Wind-Up Records & Genre Bias

(09:37–15:14)

• Example: Wind-Up Records (with Creed, Evanescence) wanted $25M in 2010–11. Josh passed, worried about risks. That catalog is “probably 10x or something like that” in value now.
• Another case: Latin labels—Roundhill passed citing lack of cultural and musical familiarity. These subsequently proved lucrative.
• The challenge: Even with data, “I need to know what I’m buying… Not inherently understanding the music inside and out… is really important to me.” (Josh Grus, 14:24)

The Importance of Cultural Knowledge and Data

(15:14–16:31)

• Data is critical, but it must be paired with understanding a song’s emotional resonance and projected longevity.
• “The number one thing for me when we’re doing deals is: I have to be able to say this song will have a really long shelf life. If I can’t say that indefinitely, it’s really hard to pull the trigger.” (Josh Grus, 16:17)

Chartmetric Stat Segment: Creed’s Comeback

(16:31–17:36)

• Creed: Once mocked, now in revival—jumped from 5M Spotify monthly listeners (Jan 2023) to 15M+ in 2026.
• Dan: “The revival of this band that truly was sparked because of meme culture… is one of one.” (Dan Runcie, 17:31)

Case Studies in Catalog Value Appreciation

The Offspring Deal

(17:36–19:30)

• Roundhill bought The Offspring’s publishing and masters for $35M in 2015 (a 10x multiple for masters, 15x for publishing).
• Sold to Concord for around $140M.
• Key: Master rights revert to artists—negotiated after success as independents. Timing of streaming’s rise was crucial.
• “We acquired this deal for $35 million. And when we sold it to Concord, it was worth around $140 or something.” (Josh Grus, 19:01)

Publishing vs. Master Rights

(19:40–21:13)

• Masters are less diversified but benefit directly from streaming revenue. Publishing is more stable and enduring.
• In the streaming era, “With the Masters, you’re getting a pure play investment into the growth of streaming… downside is it’s not diversified.” (Josh Grus, 20:24)

Goo Goo Dolls & the Power of Timeless Songs

(21:13–24:16)

• “Iris” streams over 20M times a week, now more global than ever (15M of those abroad).
• The song’s resurgence happened 26 years after its release, accelerated by sync deals (e.g., Deadpool/Wolverine movie), and viral TikTok moments.
• “It really was that Deadpool usage that sparked this big comeback for that song and a lot of viral things on TikTok that flooded in as well.” (Josh Grus, 24:16)
• Patience is necessary—sometimes waiting decades for a song’s next “moment.”

Long-Term vs. Private Equity Approaches

(24:16–25:23)

• Josh draws a contrast:
  • Buffett-style patience garners greatest rewards in music assets.
  • “Private equity” flips don’t generally capture enduring upside.

The Responsibility & Legacy of Catalog Ownership

(26:15–28:22)

• Recent Tina Turner catalog sale: Her estate expected a “buy and hold” for legacy reasons; it was resold.
• Josh:

  “Commitment to an artist’s legacy is really important... The dirty little secret might be… I know that I have to sell this in five years.” (Josh Grus, 27:08)

• For him, forced divestments were emotionally difficult and led to a new focus on creating longer-term, “evergreen” holding structures at Roundhill.

Lessons from Taking Roundhill Public

(28:53–32:17)

• Roundhill IPO’d in London aiming for “permanent capital,” but interest rate hikes led to the fund trading at a major discount to NAV, ultimately forcing a sale to Concord.
• “Our stock traded on yield… When interest rates spiked in 2023… The only way to really narrow that gap and to converge the stock price to its true value was to sell it. At the end of the day, I am the steward of capital, a fiduciary…” (Josh Grus, 31:12)
• Despite turbulent public markets, music assets proved resilient.

The Future of Music Rights Investment

(33:16–35:17)

• Asset class is now mature; more funds will face liquidity moments.
• M&A and consolidation may become the norm, but only the best catalogs will attract buyers.
• Josh is bullish about quality music rights outlasting even advances in AI.

“The value of these rights is going to be that much higher. I think in this world of AI where you have like an infinite amount of supply of AI music that can filter in, it’ll only make those classic songs even more precious because people want to resort to what they’re familiar with and they want something that’s real.” (Josh Grus, 34:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On patience:

  “Things need to be measured in decades, not years. The typical music fund timeframe… three, five, seven years might be a little short because you might miss that window where the renaissance happens.”
  (Josh Grus, 12:24)

• On cultural context:

  “If I inherently don’t know the music inside and out, it’s really hard… not inherently understanding the music… probably [has been] to the detriment of getting great returns.”
  (Josh Grus, 14:27)

• On viral hits:

  “People’s views on artists can completely turn around like that. I love that.”
  (Josh Grus, 11:44)

• On the recurring wish:

  “If there’s one thing that has always been true, people always look back and say, oh, that deal that happened then, I wish I could go back and do that same one again.”
  (Dan Runcie, 35:17)

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Key Timestamps & Segments

• 00:07–04:59 — Motown: The ultimate catalog timing case study
• 05:40–07:21 — Boom & bust cycles of music-rights sales
• 08:05–09:37 — The uncrowded early days of catalog investing
• 09:37–11:38 — Missed calls: Wind-Up Records and how hindsight always favors holders
• 13:30–16:31 — Genre challenges, data, and gut feeling
• 17:36–19:30 — How The Offspring deal exemplifies outsized returns for patient capital
• 21:13–24:16 — Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris”: The anatomy of a timeless hit and its afterlife
• 26:15–28:22 — The artist’s legacy and the reality of fund business models
• 28:53–32:17 — Roundhill’s public exit: how market cycles and interest rates forced a sale
• 33:16–35:17 — Looking ahead: M&A, consolidation, AI, and the premium on authenticity

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Takeaways

• Timing a music catalog sale is almost always luck and hindsight. Almost every seller could’ve gotten more by waiting, but “never sell your publishing” only holds if you never need liquidity.
• Patience and cultural context are crucial. Josh’s best returns came from faith in timeless songs and cultural insight—or from missing out for lack of it.
• The asset class is now mature, and only highest-quality catalogs will remain in demand.
• Tech changes the landscape, but only reinforces the value of “classic” music.
• Every player—artist, investor, fund—faces the same existential tension: flip for profit, or hold for legacy and compounding value.

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Final thought from Josh:

“That never sell your publishing mantra really rings true, doesn’t it?” (35:34)

Transcript

[Josh Grus]

Foreign.

[Dan Runcy]

I'm Dan Runcy.

[Trapital Host]

Welcome to Trapital.

[Dan Runcy]

Today we're going to start with a question. Is there ever a great time for someone to sell their music catalog? Especially when you look at it in hindsight. This question has been on my mind a lot lately, especially when you look back at one of the most famous catalog stories ever, which is the sale of Motown. In 1988, Berry Gordy sold Motown Records, the label, not the publishing, for $61 million. A label that was doing around $20 million in sales at the time. It made sense.

[Trapital Host]

Motown was no longer at its peak.

[Dan Runcy]

The company didn't have Michael Jackson anymore, did not have Diana Ross, and was struggling to find that next generation of stars. And frankly, Berry Gordy was drained. There was a lot of sadness around

[Trapital Host]

the sale because Motown had been one

[Dan Runcy]

of the most important black owned businesses in America at one time the largest

[Trapital Host]

black owned business in America.

[Dan Runcy]

Gordy was in talks to sell the business years earlier, but people pushed him to not do it. But there were very few people at the time saying that he got robbed

[Trapital Host]

or he didn't get a fair price

[Dan Runcy]

because at the time the numbers looked reasonable. But fast forward five years later, 1993, that same label, Motown, sold a Polygram for $325 million. New leadership had come in and new artists like Boyz II Men were massive successes. And the CD boom was just starting to take off, which made those old recordings even more valuable as people were starting to buy CD versions of what they already owned. Then there's Jo Bette, Motown's publishing company. Gordy had held onto that after selling the label, but eventually sold Jobette too. In 1997, Jobette was valued at around $264 million. By 2004, it was closer to $400 million. And Gordy walked away with a couple hundred million himself from the sale. But today, if Motown's Masters and Jebet Publishing were available as one package, it's not hard to imagine that asset fetching a price well over a billion, maybe even close to $2 billion for the right time in the market. And that's the tension, because at any given moment, selling can look rational. But over time, great music keeps finding new formats, new business models and new buyers. Especially now, when the market is hotter than ever. Again, is there ever a right time to sell a music catalog? To discuss all that and more today, we're joined by Josh Grus. He is the founder of Roundhill Music, which has been investing in music rights since 2010. Before this space became as crowded and as hot as it is today. We talked about publishing versus Masters deals, deals that he's passed on, and some of the catalogs that he's invested in that have appreciated far beyond expectations, like the Offspring and the Goo Goo Dolls and what Josh has learned from taking Roundhill public and then later selling the business. Hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. Here's my talk with Josh Grus. This episode of Trapital is presented by AI on the Lot, the world's largest AI media conference which brings together over 2000 creators, founders and executives for a two day summit on the Amazon MGM Studios lot. You'll experience cutting edge demos, high value networking and insights from top voices across AI and entertainment, including leading startup CEOs, filmmakers and studio leaders. You'll discover the latest in AI production through showcases, microdramas and global studio spotlights. With sponsors like Amazon, MGM Studios, Adobe and more, this is where the future of media takes shape. Use code trapital for 10% off your ticket and learn more about AI on the [e-mail] or click the link in our show notes. Got some big news for you. The third annual Trapital Summit is back year three. We're running it back in LA on Tuesday, September 15th and early bird tickets are now on sale until July 15th. This summit is for the people that are shaping the future of music, entertainment, media, technology and more. It's for the founders, operators, investors and executives that are driving this business forward. What makes our summit different is simple. We go for depth, not breadth. No overloaded panels, no fillers on stage. This is for the one on one fireside chats with the execs and leaders that you want to hear from. And it's filled with the room of decision makers to make your networking connections and relationships the most valuable they can be.

[Trapital Host]

We couldn't do it this year without the support of our wonderful partners including

[Dan Runcy]

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and several others. If you saw the highlights from past years and thought I gotta be there next year, this is literally for you. Links to get your tickets to the Trapital Summit are available now. You can go to trapitol.com summit or or tap the link in the Show Notes. If you enjoy listening to Trapital and want to stay up on the latest about how technology is shaping our culture, then make sure you tap that Star button and tap that Follow button so you can listen to us and get the latest episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Trapital Host]

All right, we are here with Roundhill Music's Josh Grus, welcome to the show.

[Josh Grus]

Thanks Dan.

[Trapital Host]

I wanted to kick this off by if we look at history from when people have bought sold music rights and how that translates with the broader era of music. If I look first dating back decades ago to the late 70s before the industry has its downturn in the early 80s. Physicals were very strong then, especially in the disco days. So that's one era. Second era, late 90s format boom with CDs, sales are off the charts and we definitely saw a lot of M and A activity there. Again in the late 2010s, early 2020s, low interest rates, we saw a lot more of these deals happening just given how streaming was starting to be a bit more mature and then the most recent one now in 2024 to currently 2026, there's a bit more validation and the asset class has definitely proven itself despite some of the higher interest rates in different economic conditions than five, six years ago.

[Dan Runcy]

Would you agree with that?

[Josh Grus]

No, I agree with that. What I think of when you go through all this is something that I think managers tell their artists, Never sell your publishing, don't sell your publishing. It's like a mantra that's existed in our industry for a while. It's something that you should hold on to despite all these different ups and downs. It's something that holds its value.

[Trapital Host]

Right. But every time you go back and at least I look through time, you get an idea for what the multiples would be for sales that happened in the 2000s.

[Dan Runcy]

Even if you adjusted for inflation, everyone

[Trapital Host]

would purchase those in a heartbeat. The timing definitely rewards the patient with these ones.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah, I think these investments have to be measured in decades, not years. I've seen a couple of different cycles, if you will. We did have a couple of liquidity events for our assets. The value of those assets would be even higher today had we held on to them.

[Trapital Host]

So if we go back to early 2000 and tens, especially right when Round Hill was in gear, you were making a lot of these deals, but the asset class didn't get the same attention that it did. How do you look at that era, specifically that era where streaming is still early but Spotify is just a few years old in the us so things really didn't pick up. And I think people were buying these thinking less about the business model being the annual subscription cycle that it is now.

[Josh Grus]

Back in 2010, well, it wasn't very crowded like it is today, but it was a different time as well. And you didn't have streaming. You did Have a lot of discussion about piracy and things like the Pirate Bay, like a whole political movements in Scandinavia, political parties, whose, whose platform was making copyright free for everybody, you know, and Google as well, really pushing that, I remember. So there was a lot of muscle behind like the anti copyright movement. And that was, that was scary for anyone in our business.

[Trapital Host]

And around that same time too, I

[Josh Grus]

had this idea, can I construct a private equity fund dedicated to music royalty investments? And again, I looked inside the room and there was no one there. And. And that was a shock to me. Certainly deals had been done in the past and were getting done, but they were very few and far between and usually between the majors. The majors weren't really interested in buying catalogs for, for some reason back then. So when things came up for sale, competition was little to none at that time.

[Trapital Host]

And then if we think about where things are today, I think you look back at some of the deals that have happened then I wonder how many artists, whether it's artists that you've worked, worked with or done deals with, especially dating back 10, 15 years ago, do you feel like any of them look at the landscape now and they're like, oh man, if I just sold in the 2020s, if I just waited a little bit longer, how much more I could have sold for?

[Josh Grus]

Yeah, I mean, I do feel a little bit bad in some of those cases. I know what the value of what they sold to us is today or what it became versus what we bought it for. And in a lot of cases it's. It's a pretty big difference. You know, songwriters have reasons to sell. When they sell, it's. It's hard to look back and change things that way. Perhaps a good story, which is the first deal that we ever looked at at Roundhill Wind Up Records. It wasn't even a publishing deal. It was the independent record company that Bicycle Music ended up buying. Bicycle later becoming part of Concord. So this would have been around 2010, 2011. Wind Up Records had Creed and had evanescence. It had CER, it had finger 11, had all these amazing rock acts at one point because of Creed, this record company's height, they enjoyed over $100 million of revenue in the CD boom days. But at this point, net label share was somewhere around 5 million. They wanted $25 million for it. But again, this was a time when no one wanted to touch recordings. I didn't have the courage to do it and didn't want a master's deal to be our first deal and have it be some disaster. I wish you could talk to Bob Valentine or someone inside Concord to find out what that's worth today. It's probably, you know, 10x or something like that, if not more. You know, with the rebound of Creed and this and that.

[Trapital Host]

I'm both surprised knowing that you had that deal at your fingertips and chose not to. I'm also not surprised because it's so

[Dan Runcy]

easy to say it in hindsight. It's so hard to have known that,

[Trapital Host]

oh yes, Creed is going to be just as relevant in their performance that they did at the Dallas Cowboys. Thanksgiving Day is going to live on and become this Internet meme that's going to help the band live on. And that's just one of those groups that you mentioned under that Wind Up Records catalog. Right around the same time, Primary Wave had gotten at least a portion of

[Dan Runcy]

Nirvana's catalog for $50 million range, which.

[Trapital Host]

Who knows what that would go for today.

[Josh Grus]

There's a time when anything was possible. And yes, Creed's stock price was. Was really low back then. For some reason, they were made fun of as a band quite a bit, and they. And then they just had this huge comeback. So, yeah, it's just a great story. People's views on. On artists can completely turn around like that. I love that.

[Dan Runcy]

And especially when you started the firm,

[Trapital Host]

what was your mentality of, okay, if I'm acquiring this asset, what does the upside look like? Was it purely just based on, okay, the multiple is this. If we sell more digital downloads, if we can get more album sales for them, hopefully they can pump out a few more and then that can push more sales for what we currently own. What was your mindset of what the actual upside was at that moment?

[Josh Grus]

Yeah, I'll flip that around to say that I wasn't thinking too much about the upside. I was more thinking about the downside, protecting the downside, and knowing that this, this is a great song that should stand the test of time. And this. This doldrum that we're in, in the music industry has to turn around. You can't just go around stealing music. It's. It's the law, right? And there. There's something inherently wrong with the notion of people just taking music. Spotify was five years down the road. I did not envision anything like that. My mantra has always been, if you acquire good songs, good things will happen over time. Over time, you have to have the patience for Creed had to have the patience to go through all the things they did to have this massive turnaround. Things need to be measured in decades, not years. And that's why I think, you know, the typical music fund timeframe for their investments of, let's say, three, five, seven years might be a little short because you might miss that window where the renaissance happens.

[Trapital Host]

I guess another aspect of this is how other genres have increased in the perception of their value and what they could fetch further on. Because I know that when Roundhill first started, you were more focused on rock music and maybe you didn't do as much in pop or hip hop, where there's a lot more sampling and split rights. But we've now seen that landscape shift where there's a lot more deals in that area too. I'm curious, similar to the Wind Up Records example, were there any pop or hip hop deals that maybe came across your desk and at the time you were like, ah, no, I don't know if this is going to be the right genre for us. But in hindsight you may look and say, okay, maybe that could have been an opportunity.

[Josh Grus]

Absolutely. It was a record label of Latin, Latin music that Concord ended up buying. I mean, this is before the Latin craze really took off. I know that we would have done extremely well with that. The problem is, for me, Dan, is that I need to know what I'm buying. And because I didn't grow up in those territories, and because I can't, someone could tell me, this is a great catalog and it's a forever generational catalog that I should buy. But if I inherently don't know the music inside and out, it's really hard for me to put 5, 10, $20 million of our capital into it. Not inherently understanding the music inside and out from growing up with it, that's really important to me. I still haven't been able to get over that. And probably to the detriment of getting great returns off of all the growth that that specifically Latin catalogs have had. But how does one really understand those catalogs if you haven't really grown up in that culture?

[Trapital Host]

And I assume that was probably a bit more of a challenge ten plus years ago because there was just less data to be able to show. Hey, you can attribute this to that trend. You can see exactly where it is. Not that it was all based on intuition, because I'm sure you clearly had Data in the early 2010s, but still, there needed to be something to match the resonance, to be like, okay, oh no, I went to this concert and I could see how strong that fan base was. Or I remember what this was like when we were Growing up in XYZ neighborhood. And I know that there is a group of fans that are going to connect with that. I know we all have some form of that in different ways.

[Josh Grus]

I think data is really important to have and we certainly rely on that. I think one needs to layer a deep understanding of the music and understanding if there's real emotional draw that. That the music creates.

[Dan Runcy]

Right.

[Josh Grus]

Because that's what it's about. At the end of the day, it's music is drawing our emotion. Certain songs have that type of draw that you know will last forever and then there's others that don't. The number one thing for me when we're. When we're doing deals is I have to be able to say this song will have a really long shelf life. If I can't say that indefinitely, it's really hard to pull the trigger.

[Dan Runcy]

Let's take a break for our chart metric stat of the week. Josh and I talked a bit about Creed's revival, but let's add some context

[Trapital Host]

to this because it truly is remarkable.

[Dan Runcy]

In 2013, Rolling Stone did a reader poll of the 10 worst bands of the 90s. One you got it was Creed with the part that says, and I quote, the band reformed in 2009 for a reunion tour, but their fans have moved on. Sales were so horrendous in Birmingham that the tickets were lowered to 75 cents in the 2000s. The group could sell out arenas within seconds, end quote. Truly remarkable because they're now having their third annual summer of 1999 tour. And to add a few more numbers to this.

[Trapital Host]

In January 2023, this was before these

[Dan Runcy]

tours kicked off, Creed had 5 million Spotify monthly listeners. Today they have over 15 million.

[Trapital Host]

The revival of this band that truly was sparked because of meme culture and

[Dan Runcy]

a number of other things is one of one. Let's get back to the episode.

[Trapital Host]

I want to talk about two artists whose music rights that you had acquired through Roundhill over the years. First, let's talk about the Offspring. I have to imagine that they probably still sold from a position of power, even though them selling 10 years ago. Of course, they could probably sell more if they held out. But again, it was a very different business than it was in 2016 as opposed to today.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought this one up because the numbers on this are public. Although I hope the guys and the Offspring don't end up listening to this. Going back to what you're talking about earlier, it might end up hurting their feelings. Knowing where the value went to on that one. We bought this in 2015 and it kind of ties into the windup story in a way because although roundhill started in 2010, I didn't get comfortable with masters until 2015. And so this was really our first deal that included Masters. So it was the offspring's publishing and Masters together, which really something special to be able to get both sides of the copyright. And the reason that they had the Masters to sell was in their deal with Columbia Records, they had a 20 year reversion to get their masters back. And I think they were only able to really negotiate that because they had been successful on Epitaph as an independent. When they got off of Epitaph and signed to Columbia, they had been successful. So they had the leverage to get a reversion of their masters. And we paid something like a 10 multiple for the the masters and a 15 multiple for the publishing. Very reasonable. But it was 2015, the timing was perfect at the dawn of streaming. And we acquired this deal for $35 million. And when we sold it to Concord, it was worth around 140 or something. What we sold to Concord was a public company. So those. Those values are all buried around public filings somewhere. So I can talk about it.

[Trapital Host]

It's not surprising just knowing what happened in this business between 2015 and 2023. But still, that is remarkable. And especially on the Master side too.

[Dan Runcy]

It just says a lot about where

[Trapital Host]

the business was because you had some uncertainty about the Masters, understandably, because especially at the time of physical sales or even digital downloads, the split between Masters in publishing is not what it looks like in the streaming era. And of course it's the publishing. That's the thing that sticks, right? Anyone can technically record a song thereafter, but you own the thing that lasts. That's what's there. So I understand that that is so much of how this industry has had things ingrained. But now you're in an era where for the past few years the people that are lobbying on behalf of the music publishers have been trying to get increased points from streaming because of how much has been dominated from the masters recording side of things.

[Josh Grus]

With the Masters, you're getting a pure play investment into the growth of streaming. The revenues that go to the Masters, at least today, is 90% streaming. The sort of downside to Masters is that it's not diversified. So there's nothing else to fall back on if something goes wrong with streaming.

[Trapital Host]

And I have to assume that the deal that you all had done with the songwriting catalog, I believe for the Goo Goo Dolls must be in a similar type of scenario. But just given the extreme popularity that, particularly the song Iris in recent years, whether it's movie spots or how high that song is on the Spotify charts consistently, you could make a case that Iris is just as popular now, if not more than ever, than it was when the song came out. And the song was huge when it came out.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah. It's amazing how some 26 years later, a song can be even larger than it was at the beginning. It's been a top 20 global streaming song now for two years in a row. It streams over 20 million times a week on Spotify. We bought the publishing from Johnny Resnick about a year later. We did buy the artist royalties. So we do, in a way, have both sides of that one as well. And what I noticed when we acquired it, and this was part of the thesis was here's a band that has great music, but it's really just a domestic phenomenon. Offspring was a global band to begin with. Like, they. They would tour Japan. The thesis with the Goo Goo Dolls was can this music catch on outside of the us People say that about country music. Oh, you know, country musical is a domestic phenomenon, and it'll catch on outside the world. It's a little harder with country because it's lyrics about trucks and beer and cowboy boots. But Goo Goo Doll's music is. Is pop. I mean, it's rock pop, but it's the type of music that can land anywhere, in my opinion. But now Iris has charted in, like, dozens and dozens of countries around the world in the last couple of years. If it streams 20 million times a week, 15 million of those streams are from abroad. But you're right, it was always a big song because I'm a guitar player. I love rock, but I was never a huge Goo Goo Dolls fan because it was a little bit light for me. It's a little too much acoustic, not enough distorted hard rock guitar in there. Although their earlier music did have a lot more of that element. But what stood out was a statistic I read in Billboard. Iris, for like, the decade between 2008 and 2018, was one of the 10 most performed songs on US radio. And I was like, wow, this song 10, you know, 15 years later is still on radio that much competing with all the. The current hits. It must resonate really well with people if it's sticking around on radio like that. That statistic really led me down the path to. To wanting to do the Goo Goo Dolls deal in the first place. Because I knew it would have a shelf life. I knew the downside was protected. I knew it was likely to be a forever type of song and the

[Dan Runcy]

one thing that sticks out.

[Trapital Host]

It would be a bit unfair to put them in the easy listening bucket,

[Dan Runcy]

but it was definitely a lot easier

[Trapital Host]

of a listen than a lot of the other rock music that was popular. TRL Era, Korn, Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit type of stuff has not aged well. The radio piece makes sense because even though easy listening may not be the most fair way to put them, it also gets you a lot of radio play and that helps you live on for generations.

[Dan Runcy]

But then so many other things are

[Trapital Host]

just like, hard to predict, right? That song being in the Deadpool Wolverine movie that makes over a billion dollars and that probably being an even bigger sync opportunity than the original movie soundtrack that it was a part of.

[Josh Grus]

It really was that Deadpool usage that, that sparked this, this big comeback for that song and, and a lot of viral things on TikTok that that flooded in as well. But in my mind, this type of thing can happen with any song, any of the songs in our portfolio at some point in time. We recently bought Modern English's catalog. They had a song, a hit song called Melt with youh in 1983. Can that song have a moment, the same kind of moment as Iris? Maybe you have to be able to kind of stick around long enough to find out. With Goo Goo Dolls. If you bought it in 2005, you would have had to wait 20 years for this, for this moment that we're talking about now. I'm a firm believer now in the very long term in having that Warren Buffett type of approach of being patient with these assets and patience really will pay off. And that's just very different from a private equity mentality. Is really like, let's buy this thing cheap, fix it up and let's flip it. I don't know if that approach really works in the, in the music right space.

[Trapital Host]

Do you feel like you've seen that mentality still permeate today? Or do you think that as the asset class has matured more that even the PE backers do have a bit more patience for understanding music?

[Josh Grus]

You know, there's different players with different angles on the space and some of them have a more long term view and some have a more short term view? A group like Lyric did phenomenally well with this Daddy Yankee catalog that they sold to Concord, but they probably owned it for three years. And that's okay because at the end of the day, you're doing what's right for your investor and if your investor, if they want that, that, that big return, then that's what you do. But if you tell your investors and you bring on board investors that are like minded and understand that this is going to be a long term, sort of low risk, medium return play, then maybe the right thing to do is, is just to take, take your time with it more.

[Trapital Host]

What you said also makes me think of Tina Turner and she sold her share of her publishing and I believe some of the recording as well. This was 2021, a few years before her death, but I think she probably knew that her health was no longer the best and the end was likely near. She passed in 2023. And then a few months ago, BMG at least sold a portion of the assets that they owned from her stake to Pop House. As a fan of Tina Turner's music, I am excited to see what Pop House does with it, knowing what they've done with Ava Voyage and that experience. But I also could only imagine what Turner and the estate might feel with regards to, oh, we thought this was going to be the buy and hold to have the legacy there. And this isn't to say that BMT did anything wrong or nefarious. I know that this is how the industry works, but this is the dynamic in just how things tend to play themselves out.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because I do think commitment to an artist's legacy is really important. You hear this all the time within the music fun space, like we're going to partner with this artist. The dirty little secret might be, you know, I'm going to partner with this artist. But in the back of the head, my head, I know that I have to sell this in five years. It really stunk for me when we sold to Concord, the London public listing, because I, I had so many really strong artist relationships embedded in that catalog. Whether it was Gavin Rossdale from Bush or the guys from Alice in Chains or David Coverdale. It's really not a great feeling to get a call from an email. You're not with us anymore. Roundhill's not the owner of the assets anymore. The whole relationship kind of dissolves. So I wanted to push Round Hill into a direction so that we wouldn't be in that kind of spot because it's, it's really not a comfortable spot. And then just going back to the Tina Turner thing, I was surprised by that. I think that has to be BMG leveraging Pop House's Ability to do something really special with the ABBA voyage type of avatar experience that I don't see. BMG would have sold it otherwise.

[Trapital Host]

I'm glad you mentioned your circumstance because that also gives insight into what it's like on your end as well. Because it's not always that, oh, the seller is trying to flip because they feel like they are just trying to capitalize on this, like someone's flipping a house. No, there could be very real market conditions. You add the public listing in London and then you pull that off. You then have the sale to Concord. I know the environment in 2021 is very different than the environment in 2020, which is also different than what it

[Dan Runcy]

is in 26 right now.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah. And I'd like to be clear in terms of the line of thinking with what we were doing when we started in 2010, no one knew about the space. It was hard enough going to investors and explaining music royalties. They got so lost and so confused. And it's a complicated ecosystem that we invest in. Let's give them the very traditional private equity structure, sort of that 10 year time frame. And so we did that with our first fund. But then seven years later, when it was time to have a liquidity event, my solution to extend the life of those relationships with the artists, et cetera, was to take that fund public. In my mind, going public would create a permanent capital situation where our management of those rights could go on ad infinitum. So the plan worked until it didn't. The big wrench was our stock, like hypnosis, was predicated on a 4 1/2% dividend yield from the offset of the IPO, our stock traded on yield. And when interest rates spiked in 2023 and went from basically zero to having a risk free rate of over 4%. As much as I think our portfolio is rock solid, investor is not going to view a government bond and Roundhill's portfolio in like the exact same way. So there had to be a change in our stock price essentially to account for that hike in interest rates. And our stock really went from trading at a 4 1/2% yield to something like a 7% yield. The 1 pound stock price it IPO'd at went down to 60pMeanwhile, the value of the portfolio, which was done by Citron cooperman as a third party valuation, the NAV of the fund was a pound 20. So here we are trading at 60p, we're trading at half of the value of our assets. The only way to really narrow that gap and to Converge the stock price to its true value was to sell it. At the end of the day, I am the steward of capital, a fiduciary, responsible for these shareholders. It was something that I had to do. We ended up selling to Concord for 116. So we got very close to the full value. And over those three years that we were public, we had, including dividends, a 30% return for our investors during a time where interest rates went up a lot. It kind of speaks to the value of these assets. Even with crazy interest rate environment, we did quite well. But it was inevitable at that point that I would have to sell that entity in order to do right by our investors, of which I had a lot of skin in the game. I was a 6% shareholder myself. That is kind of the full story on that. In terms of why we sold, and I think we sold to a great company in terms of Concord. I'm sure the value of all those catalogs is worth more now. And I know they did an ABS and this and that. I'm really keen on not having to be in that position ever again and being, you know, being able to hold on to these assets for a really, really, really long time. That's the next evolution for Roundhill is to. Is to really have what they call an evergreen fund.

[Trapital Host]

Is there any validation in seeing how the broader public markets have responded to music companies that are publicly trading? Whether it's the biggest companies in the world or smaller ones as well, Knowing that this was not just a Roundhill thing, this was across the board.

[Josh Grus]

Yeah. I mean, hypnosis was in the same boat. There were a lot of other companies in the same boat experiencing a downturn in their stock price. I will say that I think public markets have a really tough time with the music industry because it's hard to understand. It really is hard to understand. You've seen that with. With Reservoir. I was really surprised that Universal traded down to €17 before. Before the Ackman bit. There was no real justification for that. Their earnings and their numbers real rock solid and all that. Having that listed in the US I think would help because again, it's a hard to understand business for the public if it's not traded in the US it makes it more complicated and harder to understand.

[Trapital Host]

Right. Before we close things out. Where do you think things are going from here? We're at the point where the asset class is the most mature that it's ever been. We're seeing the most demand that there's ever been for these deals.

[Dan Runcy]

But interest rates are still quite high. And I'd say that there were other

[Trapital Host]

moments where when interest rates were lower, maybe things were a bit frothier, but still demand is stronger than ever because of how mature the asset class is. So where do you see things going moving forward?

[Josh Grus]

Well, one thing you're going to see at some point that you haven't started seeing yet is, is all these funds are going to need to have their liquidity of that, just like Round Hill, you know, we had to struggle figure to figure out how to do that. Our solution at that point was go public on the London Stock Exchange. I don't think that's a route anyone's going to take again for some time. So there might be fewer options out there. It's also hard to do an abs. You're locking into a really high interest rate if you do an ABS today. So it'll be interesting to see who consolidates these various funds that are out there. Who are going to be the buyers. To be honest, there might not be any buyers because a lot of these rights might not be good enough for there to be too much interest from a Concorde or a Major. Everyone wants the good stuff. Not all music rights are made equal. There's. There's a lot of bad stuff out there, too. I'd be curious to see how everybody gets about creating their. Their liquidity event. I would love for Round Hill to be able to consolidate some of those. For sure. We want to be in this for the long term. We to want. We want to be a consolidator down the line. The value of these rides is going to be that much higher. I think in this world of AI where you have like an infinite amount of supply of AI music that can filter in, it'll only make those classic songs even more precious because people want to resort to what they're familiar with and they want something that's real. Right. And the more that that's fake out there, they'll get drawn back into the things that get them emotionally.

[Trapital Host]

Yeah. And like we said, this is definitely a game that benefits those that have the time span to be able to wait, see how things play out. And if there's one thing that has always been true, people always look back and say, oh, that deal that happened then I wish I could go back and do that same one again.

[Josh Grus]

That never sell. Your publishing mantra really rings true, doesn't it?

[Trapital Host]

Well, Josh, thanks again. This was great.

[Josh Grus]

Thanks, Dan.

[Trapital Host]

Thanks for coming on.

[Josh Grus]

Okay, thank you so much.

[Dan Runcy]

And that is a wrap. Thank you again to Josh Grus for joining us. If Dexter Holland from the Offspring is

[Trapital Host]

listening to this episode, please give us a shout. Let us know. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you again to our video producers

[Dan Runcy]

and Audio G and Eric for everything that you do to help make Trapital possible. Thank you to Rwanda on our team for everything you do for the show. But most importantly, importantly, thank you for listening. If there's one person you know that would really enjoy Trapital, whether it's this episode on music rights and catalog sales or any of the conversations that we have, send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow. And if you're not already following the show, make sure you tap that follow button and follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get Trapital, make sure that you're tapped in for the next episode. Leave a comment Leave a review that

[Trapital Host]

helps make sure that Trapital gets in

[Dan Runcy]

front of the right people. Thanks again. Talk to you next time.