Bob Dylan’s catalog sold for a nine-figure buyout in 2020. Justin Bieber’s catalog sold for a nine-figure buyout in 2025. Now the buyers are moving down the food chain, and the indie labels that once sold to major publishers like BMG are finding themselves pitched to directly by private-equity firms.
Aaron Schultz, founder of Bastard Jazz Recordings, a boutique soul-funk label, posted on Facebook on July 2 about the pressure. “This week alone, I’ve had something like 6-8 catalog acquisition / PE folks banging down my door,” he wrote. He called it “gross” and said buyers were “working their way down the ladder to medium and small independent labels.”
The Buyers Are Knocking
Schultz described flat offers. One buyer offered him a flat $1 million for the entire Bastard Jazz catalog. Another offered $50,000 for one song “that was worth infinitely more than that.” A West Coast label employee received an offer far below the catalog’s value from a private-equity firm.
EDM manager Harrison Bennett calls these offers “spray-and-pray emails,” saying he got them “every week, nonstop.”
The Money Behind The Offers
Patrick Clifton, executive director of ORCA, says big institutional money is flowing into the industry. Lior Tibon, CEO of Duetti, says his firm previously required five years of financial info, then dropped to two years, then to six months. Duetti raised $200 million in January for catalog acquisitions.
Duetti recently bought catalog from Mexican artist Roland Garcia, averaging 100,000+ monthly Spotify listeners. Duetti relaunched A-Wall’s “Loverboy (Who Got You Smiling Like That)” which reached the TikTok U.S. Top 10 and pushed A-Wall to 4.2 million monthly Spotify listeners. Duetti has crossed the 100-employee threshold.
| Label | Catalog Pitched | Buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Bob Dylan | Nine-figure buyout | 2020 |
| Justin Bieber | Nine-figure buyout | 2025 |
| Pete Townshend | Acquired | This spring |
| Bastard Jazz | Offered | PE firms |
The Pattern Is Familiar To Some
Mara Kuge saw similar publishing buyout surges in the early 90s and early 2010s. Megan Greenwell, author of Bad Company, says private equity’s “philosophy is ‘We can make this more efficient. We can consolidate.'”
| Period | Peak |
|---|---|
| Early 90s | Kuge |
| Early 2010s | Kuge |
| Now | PE firms |
The Pattern Is Familiar To Some
Greenwell’s description of consolidation fits the current wave: private equity sees catalogs as reliable investments that keep earning from streams and placements. Indie labels fear the loss of creative independence that comes with selling to a firm whose first goal is efficiency, not artistic vision.
A Warning From The Industry
Clifton’s observation about institutional money flowing into the industry is not a warning. It is a description of where the money is going. Tibon’s timeline — dropping from five years of financial info to six months — shows how quickly the market has changed.
The Bottom Line
The offers will keep coming. The labels will keep resisting.
See the video the story is built around at Rolling Stone.
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