Valuation and Litigation Group

We are the Valuation and Litigation Group, a royalty compliance, business valuation, and intellectual property valuation company.  We provide professional support for the songwriter and others in the music space as well as expertise that reaches into general business valuation and intellectual property valuation, including IP related to the film and sports industries.  In this article, we focus on maximizing revenue and value from your music.

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Musicians:  Find Your Missing Money
You received a royalty statement and check.  You should be happy.  However, unbeknownst to you, there is a good chance that the royalty check you received did not represent what you are entitled to.  In fact, over 95% of our team’s audits reveal underreporting and underpaying of royalties to our clients.   

Fortunately, a pivotal provision exists within the contract itself. This provision affords you the privilege of engaging a dedicated royalty specialist to scrutinize the records underpinning the computation and distribution of accrued royalties. In today’s intricate landscape of convoluted contracts, overwhelming data volumes, and a constantly expanding array of royalty channels, the inclusion of a royalty specialist within your team assumes paramount significance for any musician aspiring to optimize earnings, safeguard intellectual property rights, and remain attuned to industry shifts. By working with an expert well-versed in the nuances of the trade, you can concentrate on your primary strength – making music.
 
When to Consult with a Specialist?
Yesterday.  We are royalty compliance specialists. Our team of professionals has over 50 years of experience in this space, playing a pivotal role in helping clients to uncover and recover an aggregate sum exceeding one billion dollars in outstanding royalties. Our profound understanding of the industry, coupled with our ability to pinpoint revenue sources and devise strategies to retrieve them, sets us apart. Our expertise extends beyond Entertainment Industry audits; it encompasses a spectrum of domains, including catalog and business valuation, business management, royalty reporting, and litigation support. 

Undertaking an audit serves as a strategic means of ensuring that your rightful earnings are fully realized. By demonstrating discrepancies to your label or publisher and substantiating instances of underpayment, you not only secure immediate financial gains but also enhance your negotiation leverage for future contractual agreements. The historical precedent of these contracts skewed in favor of labels and publishers emphasizes the significance of any leverage attained, as it directly contributes to securing the most advantageous terms possible.  

Furthermore, an audit assumes a powerful role when contemplating the sale of your catalog.  The magnitude of your revenue stream substantially augments the worth of your catalog, directly correlating to the magnitude of payment upon sale. With a typical audit resulting in 10% to 30% or more of underpaid and unpaid royalties recovered, the audits our team has performed have resulted in over one billion dollars of added value to the catalogs of our clients. 

When performing a valuation of a catalog, we utilize methodologies that involve the assessment of historical and recent revenue streams and the estimation of current worth based on anticipated income, or the application of a multiplier to revenue streams, benchmarked against analogous catalog sales in the industry. We understand this is an intricate process, and we are committed to delivering our clients knowledgeable guidance to provide them with a full understanding of the valuation.  

In addition to our team’s proficiency in music catalog-related audits and valuations, our expertise extends across a diverse spectrum of industries. We encompass an expansive array of valuation competencies, including the assessment of businesses and intellectual property assets. Our valuations serve diverse purposes, encompassing potential transactions, tax-related considerations, financial deliberations, internal assessments, and even divorce proceedings. Backed by our comprehensive valuation acumen, we deliver dependable and perceptive evaluations tailored to the unique contours of each situation.  In each of the past few years, the team has collectively valued over a billion dollars of assets.

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Case Study
Our team readily embraces the prospect of fostering collaborative partnerships that yield mutual benefits. An illustrative instance of such a successful collaboration is exemplified through our longstanding and productive association with an individual with a long history in the music industry.  This individual is a multifaceted talent, boasting an impressive array of accomplishments in the music industry. He has earned recognition as an award-winning publisher, a prolific songwriter, a seasoned producer, a revered music executive, and a skilled studio engineer. His illustrious career has been marked by his contributions to the works of some of the greatest musicians of all time, including icons like Prince, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson, Patti LaBelle, Herb Alpert, and Whitney Houston. His unwavering commitment to excellence and his impeccable character have made him a cherished figure in the world of music. There is no one like this person.  We are blessed and proud to be working with him. 

When we first met him, he had trusted some other people to handle his publishing work. Unfortunately, these people stole some of his publishing rights and registered the songs to their companies. Two of our team members with the greatest expertise in the music business, Wayne Coleman and Darla Crain, undertook the project to help him,  spending several years successfully tracking and recovering his lost money and reclaiming his copyrights.  This person is just one of many great people we work with as part of representing many recording artists and songwriters in their fight to obtain reversions, management of their rights, and compliance auditing to recover monies and royalties that should have been paid to them. Although we never like stories of inequality and mistreatment, they are the projects we are most passionate about. 

About Our Team
Our team of experts has generated a notable impact within the entertainment industry, particularly within the spheres of music, film, and sports. The clientele we have represented is expansive, including illustrious names like Janet and Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, and numerous revered Motown artists. Their work transcends mere valuation to address historical imbalances experienced by musicians and other stakeholders within the entertainment domain, aiming to rectify both their treatment and contractual arrangements. 

Notably, members of our adept team have assumed the role of expert witnesses in a multitude of legal cases. Our royalty compliance engagements extend to confrontations with major labels, where we have championed causes of equity and sought substantive reforms. Our efforts within the legal arena have been instrumental in challenging injustices and catalyzing meaningful transformations within the industry.  Most recently, Valuation and Litigation Group has established a collaboration with Armanino, LLP, a top nationwide accounting and consulting firm, to extend its range of services and support.