This case examines a 2020 pricing decision for the master recordings of Taylor Swift’s first six albums in consideration of a sale of the recordings by music executive Scooter Braun to Shamrock Capital (Shamrock), an investment company founded by Roy E. Disney to invest in media assets. Swift, the most listened-to musician in the world, had expressed displeasure with Braun’s ownership of her masters and a desire to own the recordings herself—even threatening to rerecord new versions of the master recordings. Inez Reynolds, an analyst at Shamrock, has been tasked with estimating the economic value of the masters and recommending how to advise the partners at Shamrock regarding a bid to Braun. The case provides a context for introducing students to discounted-cash-flow (DCF) valuation, market multiples, and the perpetuity model for terminal-value estimation. The case is intended to introduce students to firm valuation by providing a bridge between project valuation and firm valuation in a corporate finance course, or, alternatively, to introduce students to the partitioning of cash flows as in the case of equity residual cash-flow analysis.
This case is designed to be taught at Darden in the core finance curriculum as an introduction to firm valuation.
