Duetti drops master acquisition age threshold to 6 months and hires indie remixers

Duetti wants to buy music that used to be considered too new for catalog investing. On June 9, the company said it is acquiring songs released as recently as six months ago and launching a new in-house remixing program where indie artists create authorized derivative works from those tracks. The practical promise behind the hype: more remixes and new derivative versions can unlock additional master and publishing royalty streams from songs that do not yet look like classic “catalog” at all.

That six-month threshold matters because it is the center of Duetti’s argument. CEO Lior Tibon says the initial two-year parameter was “arbitrary,” and that Duetti’s investments in data engineering, forecasting, and “proprietary AI-driven predictive models” enable it to “materially lower the master acquisition age threshold from two years to six months following the initial commercial release.” In plain English, Duetti is saying it now believes it can forecast value earlier than most buyers were comfortable with, and it is backing that belief with new deals plus a remix engine to keep those songs monetizing.

This is happening in a market that has grown more competitive and more data-heavy since streaming became the dominant distribution channel. Streaming helped create stable cash flows and gave buyers “reams of consumption data,” which Duetti argues it can turn into underwriting muscle. The company’s strategy since 2022 has been to buy songs released as recently as two years ago, even while major music companies and catalog acquisition funds considered newer material riskier assets. Duetti’s response is to lean harder into forecasting and data, then treat remixes as a scalable way to “find new audiences and improve revenue potential [through] marketing,” as Tibon told Billboard.

Remix rights are not just creative. They are also an operational and financial system, and Duetti is trying to make that system repeatable. Duetti said it is hiring independent artists to remix, cover, and create new derivative works from more than 30,000 tracks in its catalog. Artists earn a share in future royalties from the new songs, while Duetti covers distribution and marketing costs. Duetti also said it has already worked with more than 200 artists, including RxPapi, Jesse Barrera, and Ingrid Contreras, to acquire stakes in tracks released less than two years ago. By adding six-month-old songs into the mix, Duetti is essentially trying to start that royalty expansion earlier in a track’s lifecycle.

Capital is the other half of the equation. Duetti said financing for acquisitions of these newer songs will come specifically from an existing $75-million credit facility the company has with Viola Credit. The company also noted that in January it raised $200 million through equity investment and debt financing, bringing the total raised to $635 million. That funding detail matters because catalog plays are often constrained by liquidity and risk appetite. If Duetti can underwrite newer releases with enough confidence, it may be able to out-maneuver buyers who still refuse to touch younger masters and publishing rights. For context, Duetti framed the competitive dynamic as “increased” competition for investing in masters and publishing royalties, driven by streaming data and predictability.

Duetti is not pitching this as a purely internal science project. It is bringing outside artists in, and it is trying to make remix collaborations “fully authorized and artist-approved.” The company said it has released 200 remixes and derivative works from over 100 artists across genres including rap, baile funk, and house music, across North America, Europe, and Latin America. Named collaborators include Satin Jackets, Kowloon, MC Leleto, and rising hip-hop performer zai1k. In the zai1k example, Duetti reached out, pitched songs from its catalog, and after zai1k selected “Dangerous” by David Hugo, the companies booked a studio to record new vocals and tweak production of the original record. Duetti then helped finance a music video, paid a fee for co-creating the song, and said that zai1k and David own stakes in the track while Duetti promoted it across its owned playlists, influencer campaigns, and other means.

Elliot Baumohl, Duetti’s head of music growth, said in a statement that by using AI insights and analytics, Duetti can identify the right remixing artist and pair them with a globally rich catalog built for reinterpretation, while ensuring collaborations are authorized and artist-approved. Baumohl also said Duetti is “creating the fastest, simplest remix process in the industry.” Duetti’s plans now include expanding the remixing program to genres like phonk, dancehall, and reggaeton, with an eye on markets outside the US including Germany, France, and Latin America. If Duetti executes, peers in catalog investing will face a direct question: is “older is safer” still the rule, or has Duetti engineered a workaround by combining predictive underwriting with a distribution and marketing layer that keeps rights generating?

The second-order implication for boards, investors, and executives is straightforward. Duetti is trying to lower the risk threshold by changing the asset timeline, not just the asset size. That means more deals could happen earlier, more remix-driven revenue could be layered on sooner, and the company can potentially offer more products as it “bring[s] to the market” these new options, in Tibon’s words. The strategic stake is that if six-month-old songs become a repeatable underwriting category, Duetti could widen its lead while others remain stuck optimizing within the older two-year boundary.