Music catalog valuation & transaction advisory · Los Angeles

Know what your catalog is worth before a buyer tells you.

Institutional M&A discipline applied to music rights — on the artist's side of the table. Independent valuation, pre-sale readiness and sell-side advisory for songwriters, producers and rights holders, from the first consultation through the close with the fund. In English and Spanish.

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Why independent valuation

When a fund makes an offer, it has already modeled your catalog. You have not.

Buyers do this every week. They have analysts, comparable transaction data, and a mandate to buy well. A rights holder sees one offer, once, with nothing to measure it against. That asymmetry is the entire reason this practice exists.

What your catalog actually earns

Not gross royalties. The cash that reaches your account after collection societies, distributor, sub-publishers and administration. Almost no royalty statement shows this figure directly.

What today's market pays for a catalog like yours

Multiples moved significantly after 2021 and continue to move. A defensible range is built from comparable transactions and discounted cash flow, not from what someone told you.

What is missing, and what it will cost you

A buyer will find every gap in your splits and chain of title, and will price it into the discount. Finding them first is the part of this work that returns the most money.

What moves the number

Most independent catalogs lose value on paperwork, not on the music.

Raises the multiple

A substantial sync history across TV, film and advertising
Active artist with releases committed after the sale
Five or more years of flat earnings or 4–8% growth
A catalog age inside the band the market rewards
Registered splits and clean chain of title, which shorten diligence

Lowers the multiple

Excessive concentration in a single song
Streams on a declining trend
AI cloning exposure in vocal-led genres
Active litigation, which forces indemnity carve-outs
Missing co-writer signatures — these stall a deal or kill it

What we do

Three practices. One institutional standard.

RYKA works a catalog across the three stages where its value is won or lost: when it is created, when it is developed, and when it is transacted. Each practice operates on a fee basis — the artist keeps their rights.

Valuation & Transaction Advisory

Catalog valuation · M&A · Due diligence

Institutional M&A discipline applied to music rights. Know what your catalog is worth before a buyer tells you.

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Label Services

Executive production · Music production · Songwriting

Executive production run with budget discipline. You keep the catalog you are building.

See this service → 03

Management & PR

Positioning · Awards · Access

Positioning and access to the rooms that matter — awards season, red carpets and by-invitation events.

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Pillar 01 — Valuation & Advisory

Four mandates, from diagnostic to close.

Engaged individually or as a full sequence.

Catalog Valuation

An independent, defensible value range, with every assumption exposed.

Rights & Readiness Diagnostic

Splits, society registrations and chain of title, reviewed before a buyer does. The stage that recovers money.

Sell-Side Advisory

Buyer strategy, process management and negotiation, through to closing.

Hold-or-Sell Analysis

What the catalog is worth kept versus sold. Sometimes the right answer is not to sell.

Pillars 02 & 03 — On the creative side

Build the asset, not just the release.

Both pillars operate on a fee basis. The client keeps their rights — which is precisely what the valuation practice exists to protect.

Label Services

Executive production · Music production · Songwriting

Executive production with budget discipline. The work is paid for, and you keep the catalog you build — unlike a traditional label.

Executive production and production oversight
Catalog, metadata and splits architecture from day one
Distribution and publishing structure

Management & PR

Positioning · Awards · Event access

Career positioning and strategic access to the rooms that matter. Few clients, high standard.

Awards strategy and campaigns (Grammy · Latin Grammy)
Red carpet, fashion and cultural access (Cannes · Paris)
Career positioning and publicity
Rights and deal structure before you sign

In the rooms that matter

Present where the industry decides.

Access is earned by being there. Member of the Recording Academy and the Latin Recording Academy, active through awards season — and now opening those same doors for the artists we represent.

Ricardo Anguiano en la gala Persona del Año de la Latin Recording Academy

Ricardo Anguiano haciendo networking en un evento de la industria

Ricardo Anguiano en un evento de la Latin Recording Academy

Person of the Year gala · Latin Recording Academy · 2024

Methodology

Four stages, in this order, every time.

The sequence matters. Valuing before the rights are clean produces a number that does not survive the buyer's diligence.

Income reconstruction

Royalty statements from every source, normalized to real NPS. Concentration, seasonality and trend are identified here.

Rights and chain of title

Splits, society registrations and ownership chain verified. This is the stage that recovers turns before a buyer discounts them.

Valuation

Comparable multiples tested against 25-year discounted cash flow. The range is delivered with its assumptions exposed.

Transaction

Negotiation support, term sheet review, and verification at closing that what was agreed is what was executed.

About

One side of the table understands the numbers. The other understands the songs.

Ryka Music Group applies institutional M&A discipline to music rights. The practice is built on more than a decade in corporate finance inside global companies — capital allocation, acquisition analysis and valuation, in environments where a number had to survive a board, not a conversation.

And on a working life inside music: verified producer and songwriter credits, formal training in production, artist development, and membership in both the Recording Academy and the Latin Recording Academy.

That combination is the point. A valuer who has never produced cannot read a catalog. A producer without financial training cannot defend a number against a fund's M&A team. The work requires both — in two languages.

Ricardo Anguiano, MBA Founder & Principal

Education

MBA, USC Marshall School of BusinessBusiness of Entertainment Certificate — USC Cinematic Arts / Thornton

Also

Harvard Business School CORe · MLT Fellow · Consortium Fellow

M&A

Acquisition analysis across $300M+ in closed transactions

Credits

Verified producer and songwriter credits

Academies

Member — Recording Academy and Latin Recording Academy

Languages

Spanish native · English fluent

How engagements begin

A broker's valuation is free because they only get paid if you sell.

This one is not. Independence is the product, and the fee is what makes it real — nobody here earns more if you sell. Every relationship starts with a bounded conversation; if it advances to a full engagement, the work fee is credited against transaction fees.

Discovery Call

$250 / 30 min

Preliminary review of your catalog and an estimated value range. You leave knowing whether you hold a sellable asset and what is missing.

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Catalog Review

$750 / 90 min

Working session with a written summary: normalized NPS, concentration risk, rights gaps and a value range. Credited against the work fee.

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Full Engagement

Quoted

Full valuation, pre-sale readiness and transaction support. Creditable work fee plus transaction fees, quoted per engagement.

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Two hundred and fifty dollars, against a transaction that will define what a decade of your work was worth.

Contact

Bring your royalty statements. We start there.

Valuationadvisory@rykamusicgroup.com

Labellabel@rykamusicgroup.com

Managementmanagement@rykamusicgroup.com