Music Composed for Documentary Films and Series

This asset earns from music composed for nature documentary films and series — the music that scores elephant migrations, deep-sea sequences, and David Attenborough voiceovers. Royalties are paid when those programs are broadcast on television or streamed online.

Music written for television differs from traditional songs written for recording artists. Earnings don't track listener interest in an artist or song; they track broadcast schedules and audience interest in streaming programs. A documentary streaming on Netflix, airing on France 5, BBC, and other services earns every time it airs or is streamed by an audience, for years after its premiere. Cash flow looks lumpy — heavy quarters when programs are in active rotation, quieter ones in between — but the long-tail earnings on shows from five and ten years ago show how durable these distributions can be.

Earnings in the last 12 months (LTM) were $45,947, up 43% over the prior twelve months. Most of that jump is one event: a Q4 2025 distribution of roughly $17,100, almost entirely from French TV-Film broadcast performances of "Wild Thailand" (AKA "Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise"), an eight-year-old production picking up a new French TV broadcast cycle. That payment is the kind of re-airing event the catalog is built to capture but may not repeat at this magnitude in the future.

Strip out the spike payment from France, and the underlying catalog runs at roughly $28,800 LTM against a three-year ex-spike average of $31,700 — a 9% settling decline as older productions move into deeper long-tail territory.

Durability comes from the work underneath the top five. The catalog includes compositions used across BBC's "Natural World," National Geographic's "Wild Russia," Netflix's "Chimp Empire" and "Surviving Paradise: A Family Tale," Animal Planet's "Jeremy Wade's Mighty Rivers," and dozens of other productions. Outside the top five, 287 separate compositions earned in the LTM — small individual amounts that collectively account for 34% of trailing earnings.

Nature documentaries have long broadcast lives: continuously re-licensed across territories, refreshed on streaming platforms, and rebroadcast for years after premiere. The "Wild Thailand" re-licensing is the most recent example — a production from 2017 generating a five-figure quarterly distribution in late 2025, nearly a decade after its original broadcast. Similar events recur whenever any title in the catalog lands a major new production, syndication deal, or territory expansion.

For a detailed analysis of earnings trends, cash flow projections, and investment criteria, review the full Investment Memorandum.

The compositions included in this body of work span BBC's flagship "Natural World", National Geographic's "Wild" series, Animal Planet's wildlife slate, Netflix's documentary expansion, and European broadcaster co-productions across France, Germany, the Nordics, and Asia — frequently in productions featuring or narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

The top-paying cues in the LTM come from "Wild Thailand (AKA Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise)"  (2017 BBC 3 part series); "Surviving Paradise: A Family Tale" (2022 Netflix nature documentary); "Fake or Fortune" (Series 6) (BBC art-authentication series with Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould); and "H2O: The Molecule That Made Us" (PBS/BBC/ARTE co-production).

The deeper catalog includes scores for "Chimp Empire" (Netflix), "Jeremy Wade's Mighty Rivers" (Animal Planet/Discovery), "Wild Russia" and "Nordic Wild" (National Geographic Wild), "Gorilla Family and Me" (BBC), "Rise of the Warrior Apes" (Animal Planet), "Gorongosa Park: Rebirth of Paradise" (France 5), "Ultimate Honey Badger" (Nat Geo Wild), and long-running "Natural World" episodes including "Beavers Behaving Badly" and "Supercharged Otters."

Exchange Rates. Royalties for this asset are reported by PRS in Great British Pounds (GBP). To calculate royalty payments in U.S. Dollars (USD), Royalty Exchange applies the average historical exchange rate for the distribution month (via X-rates.com). Future royalties will be paid to Royalty Exchange in GBP converted to USD upon receipt and then paid in USD to the winning investor. The receiving bank may increase the exchange rate by up to 2.5% as a transaction fee. 

Distribution Schedule: PRS distributes two types of distributions, labeled “main” and “mini”. Main distributions are made four times per year: April, July, October, and December. Mini distributions are paid monthly. Historically, these payments did not occur every month; starting in August of 2025, they are expected to occur every month. As the winning bidder, you'll be entitled to all main and mini distributions. 

Payments are represented in the financial bar charts of this listing based on the dates below.