Guest
Lior Tibon
Lior Tibon is CEO and Co-founder at Duetti, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Lior Tibon, CEO and co-founder of Duetti, explains how the company funds catalog buyouts with debt and equity and changes the industry incrementally.
Questions these episodes answer
What is Duetti and how does it buy music catalogs?
Duetti buys music catalogs and royalty income from songwriters, producers and artists, offering a fast, standardized cash payout instead of the slow, lawyer-heavy process that A-list stars have long used to sell catalogs. Tibon says the company negotiates price and which tracks to include, then closes the deal quickly once it gives a number.
From: Democratizing Music Ownership Through Smarter Finance and Technology
Why did Duetti raise both debt and equity instead of running a traditional catalog fund?
Tibon says a traditional fund's short-lived capital and management fees could never support the scale of technology, staff and infrastructure Duetti needed. Raising money at the company level instead gave Duetti long-term capital that lets it hire a bigger team, take bigger bets and build the systems that let it move faster than competitors.
From: Democratizing Music Ownership Through Smarter Finance and Technology
Does Duetti ever renegotiate the price after offering to buy a catalog?
Tibon says Duetti stands behind the number it quotes once it signs a letter of intent with a seller, and he cannot think of a case where the company lowered a price after the fact. The only thing that can change the deal is if the seller decides to change which songs or rights they are selling.
From: Democratizing Music Ownership Through Smarter Finance and Technology
Why does Lior Tibon think the music industry should be changed incrementally rather than disrupted?
Tibon says founders who come from outside music and declare that the whole system makes no sense usually have not asked why it is built that way, and end up running into stakeholders they need to work with later. His approach is to understand the reasons behind existing structures first, then push change gradually rather than starting from a blank page.
From: Democratizing Music Ownership Through Smarter Finance and Technology
How fast has Duetti grown as a music catalog buyer?
Tibon says that by some measures Duetti will end its third year ranked among the top 20 catalog buyers in the world, possibly as high as the top 10 or top 15. He credits this pace to years of prior experience in music and finance, which let the team avoid costly early mistakes and move faster than newcomers could.
From: Democratizing Music Ownership Through Smarter Finance and Technology