Since 2007, Golnar Khosrowshahi, founder and CEO of Reservoir, has been buying music rights. “It was the not hot, darkest days of the music business,” she says of the time she was setting up the company, referencing challenges with piracy and uncertainty around streaming as a future consumption model for music. “We certainly saw it as an opportunity, but it was not like I had some crystal ball where [I thought] in 15 years, that two, three, four times multiple you’re paying today is going to translate to a 20 times multiple,” she adds with a laugh.
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Nearly two decades later, the catalog market is unrecognizable from the one Khosrowshahi entered in 2007. Now, financial players of all types have become keen to buy and flip catalogs. Hipgnosis has driven prices sky high and many artists, sensing the gold rush, have jumped at the chance to cash in. With an early lead on the market, Khosrowshahi’s Reservoir has cemented itself as a competitive player in catalog acquisition, purchasing or administering rights from iconic artists like Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, De La Soul, Hans Zimmer, Sheryl Crow, Snoop Dogg and more.
On the latest episode of On the Record, Billboard’s music industry podcast, Khosrowshahi details where the catalog market is in 2026, how it got there and her fears of how shifting listening habits among fans could impact the value of hit songs in the future.
Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record below on YouTube, or check it out on other podcast platforms here.
The conventional wisdom is that the most valuable type of asset is an older, classic rock catalog. And so you see those types of bands and acts fetching really high prices — hundreds of millions, sometimes. But then, on the other hand, I’ve also heard that it’s more difficult, if you’re a country artist, a dance artist, a hip-hop artist, to sell your catalog for those same eye-watering numbers. Can you explain why that is?
Khosrowshahi: I don’t know if I would say it’s difficulties. I think if I were really to break it down, I would say: How widespread is the listenership of the music, and how long is that going to last? How long is this music going to strike a chord with somebody? And really, what that gets you to is: At what rate is the revenue on this music going to decay? Is it here forever? Is it “Take Me Home, Country Roads” that you will keep listening to, and you will be in a situation like we are today, where there are hundreds of covers and user-generated content? Or is it not going to stay with us forever?
Some hits don’t stick around...
Khrosrowshahi: Some hits are great, and they are hits in the moment, and they could be a culturally defining moment, but that doesn’t mean that they will sustain that cultural impact two decades from now…
Also, I think lyrics have a lot to do with it. It’s got to be conducive to film and TV. We see quite a bit of sync licensing across the genres. I think that if the music is at a certain caliber, you are going to get all the licensing opportunities. But in looking at how we value something, we are going to be less optimistic on film and TV sync if we’re looking at music that is filled with expletives. That’s not going to be easy.
Do you think that so many musical biopics are being made right now as a result of some of these top tier catalogs changing hands, and the new owners wanting to exploit the music?
Khosrowshahi: I think it’s partly that, but these stories are interesting, and people like to see interesting stories. Right now, I don’t know about you, but you can’t look anywhere without seeing something about [the biopic] Love Story, [about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette]… I think these are just attractive stories to tell… I also think there is just more liquidity and budgets, because the business has grown and that enables either rights holders or filmmakers or adjacent music companies to underwrite these projects. I think that’s why you’re seeing more of these projects come to life.
Reservoir acquired rights to the De La Soul catalog, and then the next month, David from De La Soul passed away. I’m wondering how you handle sensitive times like that. You’ve just spent all this money to acquire this catalog, you’re excited about it, but you also don’t want to be disrespectful or push too hard during a time of mourning. How did you handle that?
Khosrowshahi: It was a very, very difficult time. Outside of just the human, emotional aspect of it — somebody has passed away far too soon — we were three weeks shy, or two weeks shy, of releasing the music. And personally, what made me the most sad at the time was that they wouldn’t enjoy this moment together, the three of them, with their families. Forget about buying the catalog or paying them. That was not a part of what we were thinking. It was that this was going to be such an important moment for them to enjoy, the three of them together.
We went to Times Square with Maseo and Pos, where over the course of that day, I believe we had six or seven billboards, just to be with them and with family and enjoy that moment. It would have been great if he had been there to enjoy that, to see what he meant to people. So it was devastating.
As we know, artists can be unpredictable, and sometimes artists damage their own legacy. When you’re dealing with artists who are still alive and there’s a scandal that takes place — I think of someone like Kanye West or d4vd as examples — how can that impact the value of the catalog?
Khosrowshahi: We haven’t had a lot of drama, but people go through life. We’re in business with people, and people get divorced, and people have hiccups.
Maybe I’m not supposed to say this, but we do look at deals and we do say, ‘Okay, are these people we want to be in business with?’ The scenario that you are painting, we think about that, and there are deals that have transacted that we don’t want to be a part of, because that’s not necessarily a client that we would be the right partner for.
We’re using “artists” and “songwriter” interchangeably here though. Songwriters — a lot of them, you wouldn’t even know by name. Any changes that happen with them is not really a public event. For the most part, I would say that life happens to people, and we’re in business with these songwriters, and things ebb and flow. On the artist side, we’ve been kept safe from notoriety in that we don’t really have that notoriety on the artist roster. I think we’ve just been really lucky… It just hasn’t come up yet. We’ve been pretty protected on that front.
The biggest catalog sale of the last few years was Queen’s sale to Sony Music Publishing. Reportedly, that was over a billion dollars. I imagine there’s a very finite number of artists who can get anywhere close to a billion. With the speed of how many deals are happening, is there a time when we kind of run out of the very, very top-tier catalogs that are on the market?
Khosrowshahi: I worry about that all the time. And I worry about, at what point is a catalog that is 30, 40, 50 years old — at what point does it just transition out of cultural mainstream? At what point is it just no longer relevant? Are we listening to the music from the ’20s or ’30s? Like, name an artist from the ’20s.
I think that’s fair. I also think recording technology was not very good until probably about the ’40s, ’50s. Maybe the ’60s onward — or even ’50s with Elvis — that’s where the evergreen popular music canon really starts.
Khosrowshahi: I do think about what you’re saying a lot — we also have shorter attention spans. We also have much more music that we are exposed to. We have much more choice. We have much more ease with which we can listen to music and find music. So are we listening to our tried-and-true artists on repeat the way we used to, even though we’re listening to more musical hours per week? I would be surprised if you told me that we were listening to the same concentration and not to a more diverse concentration.
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