Short version: Selling your music catalog means transferring ownership of your rights (and future royalties) in exchange for a lump-sum payment, typically calculated as a multiple of your trailing annual royalty income.
When you sell your music catalog, you transfer ownership of your master rights (your recordings), your publishing rights, or both, to a buyer in exchange for an upfront, one-time payment. From that point on, the buyer collects the royalties those rights generate, and you receive liquidity today instead of smaller payments spread out over years.
This is different from a loan or an advance — it's a permanent transfer of ownership, so it's worth understanding the trade-off before you start: you give up future upside (and future risk) in exchange for certainty now.
An ownership sale like this is different from selling only your royalty income. In a royalty sale you sell the right to receive future payments while the underlying rights can stay in your name. If that is what you are weighing, our guide to selling music royalties covers it in detail.
You do not have to sell everything. Many artists sell only their master rights (the ownership of their recordings) while keeping their publishing, or the reverse. Master rights are usually the largest share of streaming and sync income, so a masters-only sale can still unlock most of a catalog's value. Masters are valued using the same methods we use for any catalog (see How Music Catalogs Are Valued below), applied to the master-side income. If you want to sell only your masters, just tell us when you submit your statements and we will price that specifically.
There is no single formula. A revenue multiple on trailing annual net royalty income is the common starting point and the easiest to explain, but a serious valuation also weighs how fast recent income is decaying, the discount rate applied to future earnings, an estimate of terminal value once growth settles, the remaining rights term, genre stability, and how diversified your income is across streaming, sync, performance and mechanical. Which levers carry the most weight depends on the catalog: a steady, mature catalog and a fast-rising recent release are priced quite differently.
Delta Juliet values qualifying catalogs using these methods in combination, choosing what fits the catalog at hand, with a minimum annual royalty threshold of USD 1,000. We favor a clear, predictable process over a lengthy back-and-forth negotiation, because most independent artists value speed and clarity.
Broadly, catalog buyers fall into three categories:
Delta Juliet sits apart from the typical boutique buyer. Among other things on responsiveness: many players in this space are slow to reply or hard to reach. We aim to be the fastest, most responsive partner for your catalog, always reachable directly by email or phone rather than just a contact form. If you deliver your documents on time, we hold up our end of the bargain and give you a concrete offer within the timeframe we promise.
Having these ready speeds up the process considerably:
Selling makes the most sense if you value certainty and liquidity today over the possibility of higher lifetime earnings from ongoing royalties — for example, to fund new music, cover a major expense, or simply diversify away from an income stream tied to streaming platforms you don't control. If you expect your catalog's income to grow substantially, or you're not in urgent need of a lump sum, holding onto your royalties may be the better choice.
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