Music ABS is starting to change who can compete in the catalog market, so we recently released a whitepaper, Music ABS and Institutional Readiness, to understand what it really takes for an issuer to get there.

What we found is that platform readiness, rather than institutional demand, is now the biggest barrier to entry. 

The handful of companies that have accessed the rated market so far have invested significantly in their underlying infrastructure, and the case studies show just how much that work has paid off.

But the bigger point isn’t that everyone should pursue securitisation. It’s that many of the foundations that sit beneath ABS and other capital routes are the same ones that help music rights platforms deploy capital faster, manage catalogs at scale, and report with confidence today.

In this blog, we look at what those foundations involve, why data sits at the centre of them, and why building them early pays off, whether ABS is on the roadmap or not.

What platform readiness actually means

Platform readiness is about whether the business behind the catalog can stand up to institutional scrutiny, whether that’s from lenders, LPs or rating agencies.

In the whitepaper we break it down into five drivers: financial, operational, legal, data and governance.

Data infrastructure is one of them in its own right, but it also underpins the other four:

• Financial readiness: can you reconcile and explain the cash flows behind a valuation?
• Operational maturity: can you produce clean, auditable data on demand?
• Legal architecture: can you quickly and accurately check rights data against the underlying agreements?
• Governance: do you have an auditable trace back to where the numbers came from?

Together, they provide a shared foundation that can be adapted for different capital routes. For rated ABS, the specific requirements include bankruptcy-remote SPVs, defined payment waterfalls, rating-agency stress testing and ongoing surveillance.

But the same drivers also show up in how funds operate day to day.

When teams review a catalog, they are piecing together revenue history from a data room, building a valuation they can defend and checking what is actually being acquired against the source agreements.

Once the catalog is acquired, operations and finance teams process incoming statements, track performance against the original underwrite and maintain a reliable view of rights and revenue across the portfolio.

When it comes time to report to LPs, teams need to explain performance, answer follow-up questions and trace the reported figures back to the underlying data.

Build the data foundation once

With all of this work happening anyway, the opportunity is to build the foundation from the outset. That way, its value compounds as the portfolio grows, and more financing options remain open along the way.

For many funds, the information assembled for the investment case does not flow cleanly into the systems and workflows used after close. Operations and finance end up reformatting or rebuilding it, with spreadsheets bridging the gap between how the catalog was evaluated and how it is managed. 

That adds work every reporting period just to understand how the catalog is performing against the original underwrite.

A shared data foundation connects those two sides. 

The work completed during diligence becomes the starting point for onboarding, ongoing management and reporting. Incoming statements and updated forecasts flow into a consistent structure and remain connected to the original assumptions.

That gives you a clearer view of performance across catalogs, helps inform how future opportunities are evaluated and makes it easier to respond to investors or lenders with confidence.

Scaling AUM efficiently depends on having that data foundation in place, but there is no single place to begin. It can be built over time, starting with the biggest problem in front of you. The technology is the easy bit; the hard part is understanding how processes and workflows need to change.

Start with the business, not the technology

Every fund has its own mix of systems, processes and internal capabilities, so the work has to start from where the business is today. A few practical questions help bring that into focus:

• What is already working well?
• Where is information being recreated?
• Where do manual processes create friction?
• What information do teams need, and when do they need it?
• What is the north star you’re aiming for?

The answers help you focus on the changes that will make the biggest difference, rather than trying to solve everything at once.

Once you understand those workflows and information needs, you can wrap technology around the business rather than wrapping the business around technology.

Modern tools can streamline specific processes, but that relies on strong underlying data and using the right tool for each job.

How we can help

Standard Innovation helps music rights investors build the data foundations they need to deploy capital faster, manage catalogs at scale and report with confidence.

Book a data maturity workshop to benchmark where you are today, and build a roadmap for the future.

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