Documentary & True-Crime Cues - Songwriting Royalties

This asset includes Public Performance royalties from 118 instrumental cues composed for audio-visual productions. ASCAP collects a fee every time one of these cues plays as part of a show airing on television or streaming on a service like Hulu, Netflix, or National Geographic. Royalties from television and film music work differently than music people stream on demand. When a documentary airs on Hulu, ASCAP distributes fees from Hulu to the composer one or two quarters later. Earnings don't track listener interest in an artist or song; they track broadcast schedules and audience interest in streaming programs.

The lumps in this catalog tell a clear story. Every meaningful spike — 4Q 2023, 1Q 2025, 1Q 2026 — coincides with the first full quarter of distribution from a newly launched show: Nothing Lasts Forever on Showtime, Mastermind on Hulu, and Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari on Hulu, respectively. Documentary cues front-load: ASCAP pays on the launch-window airings, awards a one-time bonus, and the cue earns a large opening payment. The bonus does not recur; the show then settles into a smaller recurring tail as it continues to stream.

ASCAP awarded roughly $7,400 in one-time bonuses for the Trophy Wife placement in 1Q 2026 and roughly $2,100 for Mastermind in 1Q 2025. Stripping those out, the catalog's underlying base run rate sits closer to $21,000 annually — in line with the three-year average. The headline LTM figure of $28,972 includes both base royalties and these one-time bonus payments, which should not be assumed to repeat outside of new qualifying placements.

Underneath the music written directly for specific programs is a layer of reusable library cues — Mental Stamina, Fearless Future, The Interrogation, Reaching Into Darkness — licensed through Megatrax, a long-running production music library. The same compositions show up in unrelated reality, lifestyle, and documentary programs around the world. That layer is a smaller piece of LTM than the documentary placements, but it's the piece of the catalog with an active sales channel attached — new placements can land without the composer's direct involvement.

The Fixed-Return Advance structure caps the return at $115,000, leaving the timeline as the only variable — how long the run rate holds while the launch-window earnings cycle off and the recurring tail and library placements carry the rest of the way.

The catalog comprises production-music tracks licensed across documentary, true-crime, and lifestyle television. The income mix reflects the breadth of his placements rather than any single hit composition.

The recent driver is documentary and true-crime television. Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari (Hulu / ABC News Studios, 2025) is a three-episode true-crime series that uses cues across all three episodes — "Jekyll and Hyde," "Something Fishy," and "Crocodile Tears." The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth (National Geographic, 2025) is a Nat Geo documentary special on the 1971 psychology experiment. Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer (Hulu, 2024) is a true-crime docuseries profiling FBI profiler Ann Burgess. Nothing Lasts Forever (Showtime, 2023) is a Sundance-recognized documentary about the lab-grown diamond industry, directed by Jason Kohn. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (CNN/HBO, 2024) is Nanette Burstein's documentary built from previously unheard audio recordings.

Beyond bespoke scores, the catalog includes a layer of reusable library tracks — "Mental Stamina", "Fearless Future", "The Interrogation", "Just Us", "Reaching Into Darkness", "Hills of Oxford" — that have been licensed into dozens of unrelated productions over the years, including international reality programs and lifestyle content.

How This Investment Works. As the winning bidder, you will collect 100% of payments until you receive the fixed amount of $115,000 from this asset. 

Early Repayment. The seller of this asset can repay the remaining advance balance at any time.

This catalog cannot be added to the Secondary Market of The Exchange.