Credit | Case Study
Concord: Largest-Ever Music ABS Transaction
Building on a longstanding relationship, Apollo supported leading independent music company Concord in October 2024 with an $850 Million ABS issuance – the latest of three transactions led by Apollo, including the largest-ever and highest-rated music ABS in history* at $1.8 Billion.
In October 2024, Concord successfully closed a new series of $850 million in senior notes backed by a diverse catalog of music assets. The notes were secured by music royalties from a pool of catalogs containing over one million songs, including iconic works recorded by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Kiss, R.E.M., Genesis, Otis Redding, Carrie Underwood, Cheap Trick, Creed, Phil Collins and more, and the transaction was more than 3x oversubscribed, demonstrating robust investor demand.
As of January 2025, Concord’s catalog is valued at more than $5 billion, resulting in an approximate 52 percent loan-to-value ratio for the offering, and the notes are rated A+ by KBRA and A2 by Moody’s. Its differentiated assets span a wide range of musical genres, including over 300 GRAMMY Award winners and more than 400 recordings with Gold, Platinum, Multi-Platinum, and Diamond Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certifications.
“An asset-backed solution made all the sense in the world for Concord. We allowed them to access a very efficient market in a way that they had a scalable, flexible solution which gave them a distinct advantage.”
Bret Leas, Partner and Co-Head of Asset-Backed Finance
The latest issuance represents the third transaction between Concord and Apollo in less than two years, with Concord issuing more than $3 billion into the ABS market in total. As part of the transaction, the offering was cross-collateralized with notes offered in 2022, when Apollo structured and anchored a $1.8 billion ABS, the largest-ever and highest-rated ABS of music catalog rights. Nine months after that transaction, Concord upsized its ABS master trust by $500 million with the support of Apollo to acquire Round Hill Music Royalty Fund, adding more than 150,000 songs and 50 catalogs to its portfolio.
Concord’s leadership team worked hand-in-hand with Apollo to develop a customized solution that was long term in nature, cost efficient and could grow alongside their business. Concord had been on a strong trajectory in an industry that had benefitted from the proliferation and adoption of digital streaming, and they wanted flexible capital that suited their corporate strategy, including the pursuit of accretive catalog acquisitions, which is exactly what Apollo was able to provide.
“We're really partners with Apollo in this. Apollo really has a true understanding of all the intricacies of the music business. Having a partner with that level of knowledge is extraordinarily powerful for us.”
Bob Valentine, CEO, Concord
These three transactions leveraged the best of Apollo’s ecosystem – including diverse expertise, permanent capital, and strong client and investor relationships – to provide creative, long-term solutions with certainty of execution. Apollo’s Capital Solutions and Asset-Backed Finance teams, along with affiliate Redding Ridge Asset Management and ATLAS SP Securities, all played critical roles supporting Concord through cost-effective, asset-backed financing that seeks to drive growth for years to come.
If you are interested to learn how we can help solve your business funding needs, contact ACS@Apollo.com.
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Hear from Concord CEO Bob Valentine and Apollo team members on how they executed a strategy to establish a scaled, flexible financing platform that could grow alongside Concord’s business, which resulted in more than $3 billion being issued into the ABS market, including the largest-ever and highest-rated music ABS in history.
Bob Valentine, CEO, Concord: Paul, what's your favorite song in the catalog?
Paul Sipio, Managing Director, Origination: Oh, I think it's a tie between In the Air Tonight and Linus and Lucy.
Bob Valentine: Those are two really good ones, right? Yeah. I mean, those are kind of the classics.
Paul Sipio: But we have over a million choices, right?
Bob Valentine: There are a lot. There are a lot of choices. Concord is one of the largest music companies in the world. We have three businesses. We have a recording music business where we sign new recording artists and then have a very large recording music catalog. We sign new songwriters and then also have a very large music publishing catalog. And then we also have one of the largest music theatrical licensing businesses in the world.
Bret Leas, Partner and Co-Head of Asset-Backed Finance: They also have an operating platform where they actually increase the value of their copyrights and increase the value of their royalties.
Bob Valentine: Concord sits in an interesting place in the industry. We really are truly an independent music company that's oriented on maximizing the benefit to our artists across a global platform, but with the boutique feel.
Apollo structured and anchored a $1.8B asset-backed securitization (ABS) for Concord in 2022… The largest-ever and highest-rated ABS of music catalog rights at time of issuance.
Bob Valentine: We started having a conversation around what's possible for a music company of our size to do something in this space. Apollo, creatively I thought, said not only we will buy a significant portion of this debt, but we will underwrite the whole thing.
Paul Sipio: We sprung into action quickly on the Apollo and Athene side and underwrote the entire deal and ended up anchoring it, finding other investors to come in through our Capital Solutions business that provides distribution capabilities.
Bret Leas: An asset-backed solution made all the sense in the world for Concord. We allowed them to access a very, very efficient market in a way that they had a scalable, flexible solution which gave them a distinct advantage in going out to buy new copyrights and new royalties.
In 2023, Concord acquired Round Hill Music Royalty Fund, adding more than 150,000 songs and 50 catalogs to its portfolio.
Bob Valentine: One of the important aspects of going to an ABS structure for us was the ability to use the ABS structure to grow the business over time through future acquisitions. Within 9 months of having done the ABS, we found the Round Hill acquisition and were able to execute on that acquisition because of the structuring work that we had done. The assets that were in there are pretty incredible…some of the most iconic music known to man, frankly.
Paul Sipio: Concord is just one of many examples of what we've been able to pursue and accomplish over the past several years, and it's something we're looking forward to doing more and more of as we go forward.
Bob Valentine: We're really partners with Apollo in this, and it feels like a constant conversation with Apollo about what's happening in our space, in our industry, in the credit market. And it feels good because it's a true collaboration. Apollo really has a true understanding of all the intricacies of the music business. Having a partner with that level of knowledge is extraordinarily powerful for us.
*Source: Apollo analysis based on precedent music asset-backed securitization transactions.
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