Music rights are transitioning from a lesser understood, specialist asset into an institutional-grade asset class, and funds are being judged differently as a result.

With more capital comes more scrutiny. The conversation switches from what you buy to how well you understand, operate, and report on it over time.

What hasn’t yet been established is a consensus of what represents operational 'best practice' and how institutional investors expect funds to run as they scale. As more institutional capital comes into the asset class, that gap becomes harder to ignore.

The missing lens in music rights investing

This isn’t unique to music. It’s what happens once an asset class becomes more mainstream; the scrutiny increases.

In more mature markets, investor confidence doesn’t rest on performance alone. It relies on shared a understanding of what “good” looks like in practice. Real estate, insurance, and energy all developed common benchmarks for operating maturity as the level of investor sophistication increased.

Music rights is now reaching that same stage, but a commonly understood benchmark hasn't yet been set.

Why this matters now for fund managers

Rising standards are starting to show up across the fund lifecycle:

• Raising capital: LPs expect clearer, more consistent reporting. What passed last time increasingly doesn’t pass again
• Deploying capital: Underwriting assumptions get tested earlier, and conviction needs to be backed by repeatable processes
• Managing the portfolio: Small operational gaps that felt manageable early on start to compound as the catalog scales
• At exit: Buyers want confidence they can step in without rebuilding the engine. Uncertainty and operational shortcomings gets priced, even when performance looks strong

As returns get harder to generate through acquisition alone and deal environments become more competitive, how catalogs are run directly shapes valuation, cost of capital, and exits. 

Without an established operational framework, risk builds quietly with every catalog that gets onboarded. If the number of rights you own is scaling but the systems and processes that manage them are not, your potentially missing opportunity.

Introducing the Catalog Maturity Curve

The Catalog Maturity Curve is a shared operating benchmark for music investment funds. It provides a practical reference point to understand where a portfolio sits today, what progress looks like, and how to think about where to invest next.

The four stages of catalog maturity:

The curve is intentionally simple. It describes four broad stages of operating maturity that consistently show up across catalogs:

• Manual: Work relies heavily on individuals. Data is fragmented, processes are hands-on, and insight is largely reactive
• Operational: Core workflows are standardized. Visibility improves, reporting becomes more consistent, and operational risk starts to come down
• Automated: Systems start to do the heavy lifting. Larger volumes of data are processed reliably, reporting is repeatable, and decisions start to scale
• Proactive: Operations generate forward-looking insight. Data informs decisions, issues surface earlier, and confidence increases even when complexity grows

As funds move up the curve, the benefits compound. 

Underwriting becomes more defensible, reporting to LPs becomes clearer, and diligence becomes faster and cleaner. Over time, operating maturity supports scale, creates room for operational arbitrage, improves liquidity at exit, and reduces perceived risk, lowering the cost of capital as portfolios grow.

How catalog maturity is measured:

We group the drivers across four core dimensions that consistently matter to investors and buyers:

• Data and infrastructure: How accessible, reliable, and scalable your data is
• Legal: How clearly rights, obligations, and key dates are understood and managed
• Financial: How consistently performance is measured, underwritten, and reported
• Operational: How effectively assets are administered and optimized once acquired

Together, these determine how resilient and defensible a portfolio really is as capital and scrutiny increase.

The goal isn’t to reach some abstract “top” of the curve. It’s to understand where you are today, set a strategy based on your fund and your context as to where you want to get and then make a plan to get there. The curve is designed to help maximize return on investment in your operations, the start and endpoint are not the same for everyone.

A practical step toward institutional confidence

Music remains a complex and often misunderstood asset class. That complexity used to be navigated through experience and intuition. As liquidity, competition and scrutiny increase, that’s no longer enough.

The Catalog Maturity Curve is not a prescription for how funds should operate. It is a way to bring clarity to a market where expectations have changed faster than operating standards.

As music continues to institutionalize, the ability to explain how portfolios are run, how risk is managed, and how confidence is earned will increasingly shape outcomes across the fund lifecycle.

If you’d like to benchmark where your portfolio currently sits on the Catalog Maturity Curve, head here to complete our quick assessment.