When third parties use their works, music royalties are generated for songwriters and recording artists. This includes digital music streaming, radio, synchronization to video (such as television or films), live performance and any other time music is played. Two copyrights come from the creation of music. The first is for the writing and composition of the song (publishing), and the second is for the actual sound recording (the master).
Royalty income is earned by these copyrights every time a song is played. The owners of these income streams can be the original songwriters, recording artists, record labels, music publishers and producers. An investment fund like ours can also acquire these royalty streams.
A main goal of the fund is to capture reliable, recurring streaming revenue. Audio streaming subscriptions have proven resilient and show demonstrable growth. Consumers treat their monthly music subscriptions as a consumer staple, akin to a utility bill, rather than a discretionary expense.
We also look for high capital appreciation potential. Streaming and music consumption have been growing around the world. Additional platforms that license music have entered our lives over recent years and continue expanding, including short-form user-generated video (TikTok), gaming (Roblox), and fitness platforms (Peloton).
We all have an emotional connection with music. People consume music in both good and bad markets. Our goal is to help our investors diversify in a sector that has a low correlation to equity markets and is relatively impervious to the ups and downs of the economy.
We launched ICM Crescendo to give investors access to an excellent alternative asset class in a diversified manner. We believe that we run the only evergreen music royalty fund in Canada. Our scale enables us to acquire impactful middle-market deals that are typically less competitive than the largest ones.
The ICM Crescendo Music Royalty Fund has accumulated well over 20 catalogues across a wide range of artists, producers, genres, and royalty types. Since the strategy’s inception in 2020, we have increased our monthly distribution twice.
We acquired rights to songs performed by Taylor Swift, the biggest music star today. In 2023 she accounted for 1 in 78 on demand music streams in the U.S as her Eras tour was also setting records.
We own a catalogue of songs by Latin superstar Anuel AA, including many hit songs, including “Sola (Remix)” and “Nacimos Pa Morir.”
We own copyright and royalty interests in Lauren Daigle’s Grammy-award-winning, platinum-certified album “Look Up Child.”
We recently acquired rights to The Lumineers’ last three hit albums and Vance Joy and Shania Twain’s latest album, Queen of Me.
We own certain rights for songs performed by iconic country artists Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
We acquired rights for the global hit “The Middle” by Maren Morris and Zedd. This catalogue also includes rights for Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa’s “Prisoner.”
