Byline: Jason Phillips
Hip-hop has always been a business of ownership. From Master P flipping his own tapes out of a trunk to Jay-Z’s “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man,” the culture has never separated art from enterprise. Today, that ethos is playing out in the most valuable corner of the industry: catalog sales.
Back catalogs have become Wall Street’s newest gold rush. Private equity groups and global firms are dropping hundreds of millions to acquire rights, betting on the steady income of streaming and sync deals. The moves make headlines—Dr. Dre, Future, Metro Boomin, and Lil Wayne have all been linked to blockbuster catalog plays—but behind the headlines lies a question: how do you protect the culture when the music becomes an asset class?
That’s where advisers step in. They’re the bridge between the financial machinery of buyers and the lived reality of artists who see their catalogs not just as cash flows, but as their life’s work.
One of the rising names in this space is Miami-based Tayler Scharg. Coming from hospitality, Scharg built his career designing high-touch experiences where detail and narrative mattered. Now he applies the same approach to music IP. When legacy artists, estates, or rights holders bring him a catalog, the work begins with alignment: what does the catalog mean to them, and what do they want its future to look like?
From there, the process gets technicalL ASCAP and BMI statements, SoundExchange reports, royalty splits, and decades of contracts. Scharg organizes the chaos, but more importantly, he translates it. For artists who’ve built their careers in studios and on stages, spreadsheets aren’t the language of legacy. Narrative is. Scharg crafts that narrative so the catalog can be valued not just for what it earns, but for what it represents.
In a game where speed and scale are everything, this people-first approach matters. Catalogs are history books of hip-hop, snapshots of eras, movements, and voices. Treating them strictly as assets risks erasing that story. Advisers like Scharg keep the balance, ensuring the culture gets paid without being stripped of its meaning.
Hip-hop has always fought to own its masters. The new catalog economy is just the latest battle. The ones guiding artists through it will help decide whether the music is remembered as culture or just capital.