You Can Now Buy Shares in Music by Beyoncé or Taylor Swift
It’s the latest musical mashup: Top 40 hits meet financial engineering. A startup is offering securities backed by the royalty streams from songs recorded by such artists as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and the pop-rock band OneRepublic. Its goal is to bring music investing to the masses.
JKBX, pronounced “jukebox," opened its new marketplace after the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on its first offering last week. Individual investors can visit its website to buy slices of the income generated by dozens of songs—effectively, bonds backed by beats. Among those songs are the 2009 Beyoncé hit “Halo" and “Rumour Has It" by Adele.
Others whose songs are listed on JKBX include U2, Stevie Wonder and the electronic dance music act Major Lazer. Many of the songs in JKBX’s initial offering came from a catalog of hits sold in 2021 by the pop producer Ryan Tedder. In some cases, as with Swift’s “Welcome to New York," written by Tedder and Swift, the producer sold the rights to his royalties while the performer didn’t sell hers.
The 2014 track is Swift’s only song listed on JKBX. Wall Street has been turning music rights into financial products for decades, with the rock star David Bowie striking his famed Bowie Bonds deal in 1997. Big institutional investors such as Apollo Global Management and KKR have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into music royalties.
JKBX is now aiming to bring such deals to the little guy. Founded in 2022, the company plans to keep listing more investments and ultimately build music royalties into a new asset class, according to Chief Executive Officer Scott Cohen. He expects JKBX to appeal to investors who are seeking to diversify their portfolios, as well as to music fans who like the idea
. Read more on livemint.com
