Guest
Yonas Aregai
Yonas Aregai is Chief of Staff at Gold State Music, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Yonas Aregai, chief of staff at Gold State Music, explains how the fund values and acquires music catalogs, using Alan Walker's career as a case study.
Questions these episodes answer
Why is Alan Walker considered one of the biggest artists you've never heard of?
Despite having close to 100 billion streams by Aregai's estimate, Alan Walker's mainstream name recognition does not match those numbers, especially outside his core EDM and pop-EDM audience. Aregai says this gap between real consumption and public awareness is common for artists whose value is still being built toward a household name status.
From: The Business of Music Catalogs: How Artists can Profit from IP
What kind of music catalogs does Gold State Music prefer to acquire?
Gold State has bought catalogs across genres and territories, but its sweet spot is rights belonging to artists, songwriters or producers with years of history who are still actively releasing new music. Aregai says ongoing output keeps benefiting the older catalog, and the fund's exploitation efforts benefit the artist's current work in return.
From: The Business of Music Catalogs: How Artists can Profit from IP
How does Gold State Music value a music catalog before buying it?
The fund combines quantitative data such as consumption patterns, demographic trends and historical revenue volatility with harder to quantify factors like an artist's cultural impact and their ongoing engagement with fans. Aregai says the multiple is the number people get stuck on, but it rests on a thorough analysis of the quantitative and qualitative drivers of every song in the catalog.
From: The Business of Music Catalogs: How Artists can Profit from IP
Why doesn't Gold State Music aim to exit its music catalogs quickly?
Aregai says the fund's overarching strategy is to build something that lives on for generations rather than a portfolio built purely to be resold within a few years. Owning rights over a longer horizon lets the fund avoid being stressed by short-term market swings, since its returns are meant to compound over decades.
From: The Business of Music Catalogs: How Artists can Profit from IP