Investment firms have turned music catalogs into an asset class

Evidence

With a renewed potential for profit in the streaming era, the music industries are subject to new financial predations, such as those by investment firms like Hipgnosis, Round Hill, Shamrock, and other “song management” firms that have turned music catalogs and publishing rights into an asset class. The effects of this financialization on the production and circulation of music are the same as they are in the wider American economy: a corrupt infrastructure, a plutocratic ruling class, a growing precarity for workers, and vast inequality. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 50

Categorization

• XREF: Core to reader’s project: catalog acquisition as the financial instrument to trace into artistic form. Hipgnosis, Round Hill, Shamrock are named concrete instances.
• QUESTION: The causal link claimed (‘effects of financialization on production and circulation’) is asserted but not yet shown for specific songs — flag whether later chapters demonstrate it.