Taiwan set KKBOX’s MÜST composition licence at 2.75% of relevant revenue or NT$0.40 per music click. Neither figure tells an artist what the catalogue earns. A valuation has to start with money that reaches the rights holder, then treat any permission that has yet to produce income as a separate decision.
Start at the receiving ledger
The 2.75% figure describes a licence for compositions on a platform. Taiwan streaming royalties also sit in separate master and composition ledgers. Applying that platform licence rate to a catalogue’s streams would skip the steps between the platform’s obligation and the owner’s receipt. The owner needs the statements that identify its share, the right being paid and the period covered.
The same distinction applies at a larger scale. Growth in total digital collections cannot forecast the income of an individual catalogue. A market total pools payments whose platform terms, territories and recipients differ. For a catalogue decision, the useful question is narrower: which amounts appeared on its statements, under which licences, and for which rights?
Put each incoming payment beside the claim that generated it. A composition payment belongs in a different line from master income. A territory statement belongs beside the relevant platform terms. That layout lets a seller show what a buyer would actually receive and lets an independent label identify a missing payment without mistaking a broad collections trend for its own growth.
Keep the payment conditions visible
Audience activity becomes a valuation input only after its path to payment is clear. An overseas listener and a view from a growing audience are different revenue signals. The listener’s territory, the payment conditions and the applicable right determine what either signal can say about catalogue income. A view count alone does not identify a payable claim.
For an independent artist or label, this changes the order of the work. Begin with receipts and statements, match them to rights and territories, then investigate audience activity that has no matching income. That sequence also makes a proposed sale easier to examine. A buyer can distinguish a payment history from an opportunity that depends on a claim, a platform condition or a future agreement.
Use a short working schedule for every income line:
- Right: Identify whether the payment concerns the master or the composition, using the two streaming ledgers as the basic separation.
- Route: Record the platform terms and territory statement that connect use to the payment, the records needed to trace what reaches a catalogue.
- Result: Record the amount received for the stated period. Keep audience measures beside that result for investigation, rather than entering them as income.
This schedule does not require a marketwide rate to stand in for a catalogue’s yield. It gives the owner a repeatable way to explain why a payment belongs in the income history and where a gap still needs checking.
Price new permission outside the royalty history
An artificial intelligence (AI) agreement creates another category. A catalogue owner considering one must identify which music the service may use, what users may generate and how each permitted use will be paid. Those are deal terms to settle, not amounts already demonstrated by streaming statements. Adding an assumed AI payment to historical royalties would make a catalogue appear to earn cash before the permission and its price are defined.
The permission also has more than one dimension. Complaints against Suno raise separate questions about using protected music and allowing users to imitate a voice. An owner assessing a proposal should make a distinct decision on each requested use. A price attached to one permission should not silently stand for another.
That separation helps both sides of a catalogue transaction. A seller can present receipts supported by statements and describe proposed permissions on their own terms. A buyer can assess whether an AI agreement would pay for specified uses without folding that possibility into a streaming income line. An independent artist or label can make the same distinction when deciding whether to retain a right, license a particular use or discuss a catalogue price.
The practical valuation file therefore needs two columns: cash received under existing rights and licences, and permissions whose scope and payment still require a decision. Start the first with the master and composition statements. Build the second from the music a service seeks to use, the outputs it would allow and the payment attached to each use. The 2.75% Taiwan licence rate belongs in neither column as an artist payout: it is KKBOX’s composition licence measure, not the owner’s royalty rate.
