← Business Models: Industry Specific (Consumer, Services & Financial) (all topics)
Catalogue vs new-content mix
What it is
The split between revenue from older recordings and from newly released music. Catalogue is fully amortised, carries no marketing cost and earns indefinitely; new content requires advances, production and promotion against uncertain returns
In India film soundtracks historically dominated both, though independent and regional releases are shifting the composition of new output
Impact on industries
- Catalogue is the highest-quality earnings in music - predictable, cost-free and annuity-like, which is why catalogues trade at high multiples as financial assets
- Streaming favours it structurally, since a listener can reach a fifty-year-old track as easily as a new release, unlike the radio and retail era
- Over-reliance on catalogue hollows out the pipeline - without new hits the catalogue itself ages, and cultural relevance decays even as the back book earns
- New content economics are brutal: most releases never recoup, so the model depends on a small number of successes funding a large number of failures