Why AI is about to break the music valuation model
09 Dec, 2025
The music industry is standing at a crossroads where AI will either become the biggest new revenue stream in its history or trigger the largest transfer of value away from rights holders and into AI platforms.
In this episode, we sit down with entrepreneur and technologist Benji Rogers (Sureel AI, Lark42) to unpack what that means for music investors and catalog buyers. Benji argues that most funds are still pricing catalogs off 10–18x past revenues as if the next decade will look like the last, without modelling how AI will change what gets played, synced and surfaced by pushing the cheapest viable audio over premium IP.
We explore how attribution and licensing design could turn AI from an opaque threat into a metered, recurring revenue stream, and why unreleased, un-scraped and more novel recordings may soon become some of the most mispriced assets in the market. At stake is whether music investors capture the upside of this shift — or accidentally finance the next major wealth transfer out of the music ecosystem.
Brought to you by Standard Innovation.
03:56 – AI as a new royalty engine for catalogs
07:45 – The one-off AI buyout that kills long-term upside
09:04 – Synthetic data: AI’s path to avoid paying originals
15:35 – AI ads and auto-music: the sync margin gets squeezed
18:23 – Why 14–18x catalog multiples may be stale
23:50 – Fair use vs training: the legal line for ownership
39:50 – The 3-layer deal: training + attribution + revenue share
57:35 – The barbell strategy: hits today, unreleased value for AI
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► About Standard Innovation
Standard Innovation helps music rights funds improve catalog performance with better data, governance, and operational discipline.
► Episode Links
Sureel AI: https://www.sureel.ai
Lark42: https://www.lark42.com
Standard Innovation: https://standard-innovation.com
► Credits
Guest: Benji Rogers — Co-President, Sureel AI; Partner, Lark42
Hosts: Emma Griffiths, Tom Mullen, Sam Morey
Theme: “Meet Me” — Outlines (Written by Sam Cox) — Courtesy of Bespoke Records