"Now that you’ve bought this iconic song catalog, what are you going to do with it?"

Several companies have spent billions of dollars buying music catalogs of established pop stars. Variety goes behind the new model in the music business: "A song catalog is an asset much more complicated than, say, a Picasso or even many real estate properties, and some investors seem to enter the arena on the mistaken premise that all songs, or even all hit songs, are created equal. In reality, they are demanding, ephemeral assets that require a lot of attention — pitching, repackaging, finding new opportunities — without oversaturating and thus damaging the artist (a.k.a the brand) or the songs".