Bowie Bonds (1997)
David Bowie raised about $55 million by securitizing the future royalty income of his pre-1990 catalog, issuing 10-year bonds purchased by Prudential Insurance. The bonds were the first to treat a musician's royalties as investment-grade collateral.
The issue sold out quickly and gave Bowie immediate cash for catalog and asset purchases, setting a template later used for other artists' catalogs.
Moody's downgraded the bonds as album sales fell, and the issue was bought out in 2007. The lesson: royalty-backed debt works while the underlying cash flow holds.
Same mechanism as CreatorFi — turning predictable IP cash flows into upfront capital — applied to platform payouts instead of record sales.
