If you’ve ever read a headline about a music catalog sale and wondered exactly what was bought and sold, you’re not alone. Golnar Khosrowshahi, founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, broke down the distinction clearly in her appearance on Billboard’s On the Record — and the difference matters more than most people realize.
1. Masters and publishing are two completely separate assets
When an artist records a song, two distinct sets of rights are created. The master recording — the actual audio file you hear on Spotify — is typically owned by the record label that funded the recording. The publishing rights cover the underlying composition: the melody and lyrics written by the songwriter. These can be owned by a publisher, the artist themselves, or split between multiple parties. Every catalog deal involves one, the other, or both — and the price reflects which rights are actually on the table.
“You can sell your publishing, which is the songwriting rights. Those are two different things — masters versus publishing. A lot of people want one or the other or both.”
2. Publishing has historically been the safer bet
In the early days of the catalog market, publishing rights were considered far less risky than masters. Masters required active marketing investment — vinyl releases, promotion, physical product — while publishing generated royalties more passively every time a song was performed, streamed, or licensed. For investors who wanted steady income without operational complexity, publishing was the cleaner bet. Today, Khosrowshahi says the two asset classes trade at roughly equivalent multiples — but the underlying operational demands remain very different.
“In the early days, the publishing was far less risky. Today I would tell you that these assets are trading at par.”
3. Owning masters means running an active business
Buying master recordings isn’t a passive investment. It comes with real operational responsibilities: releasing vinyl, running marketing campaigns, pitching music supervisors, and managing a recorded music roster. Reservoir maintains entirely separate teams for its publishing and recorded music businesses precisely because the work is so different. Anyone looking to acquire masters needs to honestly assess whether they have the infrastructure and expertise to actively manage that catalog — or whether they’re better suited to the publishing side.
“Publishing is more like ‘I want checks to come in the mail.’ Masters are ‘I’m out there, I want to market, I want to make it more valuable.’”
4. Who owns the other side of the rights matters too
If you buy publishing rights to a song, you’re now in a long-term relationship with whoever owns the masters — and vice versa. Khosrowshahi says Reservoir always investigates this before closing a deal. Are the masters owned by a major label with resources to keep marketing the music? Or are they sitting with a smaller label that may not be around in five years? The quality and commitment of the party controlling the other set of rights has a real impact on how much value a catalog can generate over time.
“We definitely look at who owns the masters — are they going to keep doing any job? Because that’s what you really want to know.”
5. Taylor Swift’s situation clarified everything for a mainstream audience
When Big Machine Records sold Taylor Swift’s master recordings to Shamrock Holdings without her consent, millions of people suddenly understood — viscerally — why the masters vs. publishing distinction matters. Swift had signed her deal as a teenager, which was standard practice at the time: the label funded the recordings and retained ownership. Her decision to re-record her entire back catalog as “Taylor’s Version” was an unprecedented response, and it accelerated a broader industry shift toward more artist-friendly deal structures where ownership eventually reverts to the artist or is shared from the outset.
“That situation really put a spotlight on the fact that Taylor Swift did not own her own masters — and nowadays we’re seeing much more artist-friendly deals at these record labels.”
Based on Golnar Khosrowshahi’s appearance on On the Record, Billboard’s music industry podcast.
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