The idea of packaging up assets and selling them as securities is, to say the least, one that we’re all too familiar with. For most, especially those who lived through the global financial crisis, housing debt stands out as the prototypical bundle. But as today’s music-rights salesmen are demonstrating, just about anything with a revenue stream can be wrapped up, sliced, and sold.
It’s worth asking why Bowie launched the bonds in the first place. In 2016, the BBC reported that the late musician used some of the capital raised to “buy out his former manager” as he sought greater control over his work. The deal also seems to have left him with a healthy boost to his wealth, too. But it’s complicated. Musicians are, after all, workers whose creative output is routinely extracted and exploited by music labels, financial intermediaries, and, today, streaming services. It’s hard to fault them for trying to regain control of their own work, as Van Morrison and Taylor Swift have famously attempted.
That the musicians are wealthy and powerful is notable, of course, but it doesn’t negate a principle long held on the Left: that exploiting labor, creative or otherwise, and depriving workers of their output is anathema to a socially solidaristic society. But then so is leveraging the endless securitization of creativity, or anything else, to make bank. And yet, the model works.
The contemporary “resurgence” of securitized music catalogues includes deals involving The Beatles, Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga, artists who are as much brands and commodities as they are performers. Their ability — and that of their peers — to generate steady returns is real. As Michelle Gasaway, David Eisman, and Blake Bainou wrote for Reuters last year, the issuances between 2020 and 2024 surpassed $8 billion. They explain the appeal this way:
The consistent cash flows and long-term duration of music copyrights and royalty streams are increasingly being viewed as stable, long-term investments with diversification potential. This shift, particularly evident since 2020, is driven by several converging factors: the rise of streaming platforms, improved data transparency and expanded monetization channels.
At its core, selling securitized music catalogues is just another form of selling intellectual property — property embedded in cultural, economic, and legal regimes that turn artistic output into exchangeable assets. The resemblance to NFTs is obvious enough that crypto enthusiasts have already asked, “Bowie bonds hit the mainstream; can crypto leverage the tokenized IP model?” The difference is that these bonds are tethered to more tangible streams of revenue than digital Beanie Babies or jumped-up JPEGs.
Ultimately, their growing popularity is a reminder that finance doesn’t really innovate so much as it colonizes. Once technologies make royalties measurable and regular, they become collateral like mortgages or car loans. The Bowie bond was once an oddity, but today it is an ordinary instrument. This is perhaps the part we find the most unsettling — the market will commodify and, if necessary, securitize anything that yields a return. And in the absence of regulatory limits, it will securitize everything.
