An offer of twelve times annual income, paid in one lump sum. It sounds enormous. But is it?
Take a client ten years into writing, whose catalogue (forty-odd tracks, a few placements, steady ) generates about £10,000 a month. A company offers to buy the whole thing.
To judge that, line the two futures up. Selling swaps everything for one cheque today: the times the annual income, and then nothing more, ever. Holding keeps the income, but a catalogue's rarely stay flat; they tend to fade a little each year as songs age, so the client collects a shrinking amount annually rather than the same figure forever. So the honest comparison is one fixed lump sum against the sum of a declining stream over however many years you look ahead. Whichever is bigger depends entirely on three dials: the multiple offered, how fast the income decays, and how long a horizon you measure. Hold those three in mind for the next question.