JBanks Creative | The Investor Thesis

01The Window

Why this is the moment to be buying catalogs

2026 sits between two repricings. The 2021 bubble already deflated. The recovery has not finished arriving. Fundamentals went up while price came down, and that gap is the trade.

You are buying after the crash, before the re-rate. Multiples peaked at 22 to 30x net publisher's share in 2021 when money was free, then were cut nearly in half as rates spiked. The industry grew every single year through that repricing. The asset never got worse. Only the price got better.

The rate cycle is turning back in the asset's favor. Catalog valuation is discounted cash flow math, and the discount rate is falling. Buy at today's multiple and the same catalog mechanically re-rates as financing gets cheaper.

The AI discount is flipping into an AI dividend. For two years AI was priced into every deal as pure risk. The major-label lawsuits are now settling into licensing agreements, converting the industry's biggest fear into a brand-new royalty stream that is not yet in anyone's model. Buy at a price that reflects the fear; hold through the conversion.

The exit was just proven at institutional scale. In May 2026, Sony agreed to acquire Blackstone's Recognition Music Group, a 45,000-song portfolio, for a reported $3.5 to 4 billion, above Blackstone's entry value. A full institutional round trip is what an asset class needs to be real. Prices have not fully caught up to that proof.

Fundamentals up, valuations down. That is the whole setup.

12–18xtoday's multiple on established catalogs, versus 22 to 30x at the 2021 peak

$3.5B+Sony's reported purchase of Blackstone's Recognition catalog, May 2026: the proven exit

$1.5Bsingle music-royalty securitization, part of a functioning ABS market that finances and exits catalogs

+17.1%Latin America streaming growth last year; MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa grew 15.2%. Billions of listeners are just entering paid streaming

2021

The wrong time at the wrong price. Free money pushed trophy catalogs to 30x. Discipline left the market.

2023 to 2024

The right asset, frozen. Rates and AI panic halved multiples while the industry quietly kept growing.

2026

Both overhangs resolving, entry prices still reflecting them. Wait for the second Sony-scale exit to print and you are paying 2021 multiples again.

02Why JBanks Creative

The market rewards owners who can make old songs new

Most catalog buyers are financiers who hold and hope. Active management is where alpha lives in this asset class, and activation is precisely what this team has done at the highest level. Over 1B streams driven across Jordan Banks' 8-year A&R career, including the playbook that turned a 20-year-old song into a Grammy-nominated, multi-Platinum number one.

Writers camps

We bring top writers together in rooms with the catalogs we own. New songs built on proven foundations: interpolations, updates, and co-writes that create fresh copyrights on top of the ones we bought.

Remixes and samples, placed

We provide remixes and clear samples directly to top artists through relationships built over a decade inside the industry. Every placement is new revenue on an asset we already own.

Platform-native reintroduction

Sync in film and TV, short-form video seeding, playlist strategy, and territory expansion into the fastest-growing streaming markets. Catalogs acquired on Western earnings carry untapped geography priced in at zero.

Jordan Banks

CEO · A&R

Franklin Eruo

Underwriting

Andrew Lowenbaum

Culture

Chelunor Nwajei

Strategy · Capital

03The Asset Class

Contracted cash flow that belongs in a diversified portfolio

Royalties are not speculation. They come from statutory rates, collection societies, and licensing contracts, and they now sit inside a maturing capital-markets infrastructure that can finance, package, and exit them.

Bond-like income, equity-like upside

Streaming turned lumpy album-cycle income into recurring monthly cash flow. A proven catalog pays whether or not anyone is excited about it, and active management can grow the coupon.

Low correlation to markets and rates

People do not cancel their music subscription in a recession the way they cancel vacations. Listening behavior, not the business cycle, drives the income. Music sits alongside timberland and royalties as a genuine diversifier.

Built-in inflation participation

Subscription price increases flow straight through to royalty pools, and US mechanical rates are indexed upward under CRB settlements through 2027. Pricing power without operational overhead.

Securitization created the exit

Music royalty ABS is now a functioning market, with individual deals as large as $1.5 billion and rating-agency criteria published. Catalogs can be borrowed against, packaged, and sold. The liquidity this asset always lacked is arriving.

04The Architecture

Built like the structure that institutionalized real estate

Individual catalogs are houses. A managed portfolio of catalogs is a block, and blocks trade at a premium to the sum of their houses: diversification, scale, institutional access, and one professional operator across every asset.

"An umbrella partnership roll-up. For catalogs."

The same architecture real estate used to turn individual buildings into investable portfolios, applied to legacy music.

STEP 1

Acquire deal by deal

Each catalog is acquired in its own ring-fenced series. Investors in a deal own that deal. Clean title, clean exposure, no cross-contamination between assets.

STEP 2

Contribute into the partnership

Series holders can exchange single-asset positions for units in the operating partnership that holds the whole portfolio, on a tax-advantaged basis. A house becomes a share of the block.

STEP 3

The block re-rates

A diversified, professionally managed portfolio of catalogs commands what individual catalogs cannot: institutional buyers, securitization access, and a public-market path. That is the premium.

From houses to a block

Illustrative mechanics, not projections

Deals closed 1 of 10

Capital deployed

$40M

1 catalog acquired

Sum of the houses

$40M

Standalone, at entry value

Value of the block

$40M

No block yet: one building

Premium created

$0M

The block premium needs a block

Illustrative only, using a hypothetical $40M per catalog and a hypothetical aggregation re-rate to demonstrate the structural concept. Not an offer, a forecast, or a representation of expected returns. Actual deal sizes, multiples, and outcomes depend entirely on underwriting.

Discipline

What we underwrite against

The thesis is not the underwriting. Every tailwind above can arrive slower than the story implies, and catalog deals are won or lost in diligence. These are the risks we price on every deal.

Valuations are rate-sensitive. That is why multiples halved, and it cuts both ways.

AI substitution risk carries a real premium, especially on instrumental and library catalogs.

Chain-of-title defects and unsigned split sheets can gut a deal. Title work is non-negotiable.

Single-song concentration above roughly half of a catalog's earnings is a red flag we price, not ignore.

Per-stream rates could compress as platforms fight for margin. We model decay, not hope.

Discipline on entry multiple matters more than the industry growth story. Now is a good time to buy correctly, not to overpay.

The market repriced. The music kept growing.

Why this is the moment to be buying catalogs

The market rewards owners who can make old songs new

Writers camps

Remixes and samples, placed

Platform-native reintroduction

Contracted cash flow that belongs in a diversified portfolio

Bond-like income, equity-like upside

Low correlation to markets and rates

Built-in inflation participation

Securitization created the exit

Built like the structure that institutionalized real estate

Acquire deal by deal

Contribute into the partnership

The block re-rates

From houses to a block

What we underwrite against

The full memo goes deeper.