The Economics of Knowing: When Better Music Data Becomes Financial Intelligence

Royalty investigations begin with a defensive question: have I been paid correctly? Catalogue investments begin with a very different one: what is this thing worth? The first looks backwards through statements and usage. The second looks forwards at future income. What is striking is how much of the information needed to answer them is the same.

Finding out has a price

When establishing the facts is expensive, people only ask questions valuable enough to justify the cost. A possible £500,000 discrepancy makes an audit costing, say, £15,000 an easy decision. A possible £20,000 does not, especially when nobody knows whether the £20,000 exists until the work is done. That creates an invisible minimum case size.

Catalogues are now serious financial assets

Citrin Cooperman says it valued 566 music catalogues in 2025, worth nearly $13 billion combined. UK research drawing on BPI data found that catalogue music accounted for 72% of UK audio streams in 2021. Yet Duetti’s Music Finance Index H2 2026 found valuation expectations to be the most commonly cited barrier to catalogue deals, cited by 74% of respondents. Investors do not only price expected income. They price the uncertainty around it, and poor information can become financial risk.

The flip side of ‘how much am I owed?’

If an investigation has already established which works exist, who owns them, how income has behaved and where records disagree, much of the groundwork for due diligence has already begun. The same connected information can help an investigator, an accountant, a valuer, a lawyer, a buyer and an owner each answer a different question.

Why it matters

The Economics of Knowing closes the series with its central economic argument: reduce the cost of establishing the facts and the range of questions worth asking expands. Better data does not remove investment risk. It shows where the uncertainty is. And sometimes the return on knowing is not a recovery cheque. It is a better decision.

What’s inside the paper

• Why the cost of looking sets an invisible minimum case size
• How catalogue valuations depend on the character of revenue, not just its size
• Why investigation can become triage across a whole catalogue
• The honest limits: what better data can and cannot do for investment