Mooring Music Group Buys Stake in Mariah Carey’s Holiday Giant
By Trevor Loucks
Founder & Lead Developer, Dynamoi
It is the investment equivalent of buying stock in Santa Claus. On Thursday, Mooring Music Group announced it has acquired a minority stake in the master royalties for Mariah Carey’s "All I Want for Christmas Is You," a transaction that signals a maturing phase in music financialization.
The deal, facilitated by Sound Ark Entertainment, does not just move rights for a pop song; it secures access to one of the few assets in the modern music economy that behaves more like a Treasury bond than a copyright. While financial terms remain undisclosed, the acquisition gives Mooring—the music arm of Pier Asset Management—a slice of a recording that holds the all-time record for weeks at Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
For strategists watching the rights market, this is a pivot point. The era of indiscriminately buying massive, diluted catalogs is giving way to surgical strikes on "blue-chip" assets that offer immunity to streaming volatility.
A negative decay unicorn
In valuation modeling, most hits suffer from "decay"—a predictable decline in streams after the initial release cycle. Carey’s 1994 hit defies this physics. It exhibits a negative decay rate, meaning its consumption effectively grows or stabilizes year-over-year as streaming adoption deepens globally.
The metrics tell the story:
- Volume: The track surpassed 2 billion streams on Spotify in December 2024, the first holiday song to cross that threshold.
- Dominance: It has logged 20 cumulative weeks at Number 1 on the Hot 100, returning to the summit annually.
- Velocity: It holds the Guinness World Record for most Spotify streams in a 24-hour period for a holiday track.
Key insight: Investors are no longer paying premiums for "potential"; they are paying for predictability. A song that reliably spikes every Q4 allows for precise cash-flow modeling that new releases cannot match.
The mid-market arbitrage
This deal clarifies Mooring Music Group’s position in the ecosystem. While giants like Hipgnosis or Litmus have historically chased nine-figure catalog takeovers, Mooring is capitalizing on the "mid-market" gap.
Backed by Pier Asset Management’s $500M+ financing history, Mooring targets a specific deal size: $50k to $5m. This strategy allows them to:
- Avoid bidding wars: They aren't fighting private equity giants for the Queen or Michael Jackson estates.
- Provide liquidity: They serve songwriters and legacy artists who need capital but don't own a $100 million catalog.
- Offer flexibility: The firm prioritizes passive minority interests, allowing original rights holders to retain control while unlocking cash.
Mooring CEO Jillian Murrish and CIO Conor Neu have explicitly framed this approach around "long visibility runways," creating a portfolio of durable copyrights rather than speculative bets.
Passive yield vs. operational control
The Mooring deal lands just as the industry witnesses a contrasting approach to asset management. Within the same 24-hour news cycle, Beggars Group consolidated its majority control (51%) of XL Recordings, locking down operational oversight of heavyweights like Adele.
The distinction is critical:
- Beggars Group is executing an operational play: consolidating A&R power and creative control to drive long-term value through active management.
- Mooring Music Group is executing a financial play: acquiring fractionalized, passive rights solely for the yield, akin to syndication in real estate.
This fragmentation suggests the future of rights ownership will be increasingly tranche-based. A single mega-hit like "All I Want for Christmas Is You" may eventually have its revenue streams sliced among labels, original creators, and multiple financial institutions, each holding a distinct class of the asset.
What labels should watch
As WMG CEO Robert Kyncl noted in an internal memo on Dec 18, major labels remain obsessed with breaking new global superstars to drive market share. However, the financial sector is proving that the "long tail" of catalog—specifically seasonal standards—is where the safest money lives.
For rights holders, the takeaway is clear: If you own a perennial copyright, you no longer need to sell the farm to get liquidity. The market now supports selling just the winter harvest.
About the Editor
Trevor Loucks is the founder and lead developer of Dynamoi, where he focuses on the convergence of music business strategy and advertising technology. He focuses on applying the latest ad-tech techniques to artist and record label campaigns so they compound downstream music royalty growth.
