Air Supply's "Just As I Am" - Publisher Royalties

In 1985, Air Supply took this ballad to No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 on Adult Contemporary, with No. 1 placements in Guatemala, Panama and Puerto Rico. Forty-one years later, it is still growing. Earnings over the last twelve months came to $1,715, ahead of each of the two prior twelve-month periods and about 5% above the three-year average. 

The song also kept getting recorded. Japanese singer Kahoru Kohiruimaki cut it for her 1985 debut album, and Jamaican vocal group L.U.S.T. turned it into a reggae single in 2008 that later appeared on their 2010 album Inspiration. Each version is a separate recording of the same composition, and each one pays into this catalog. Any new covers of the song will be payable to buyer when they earn.

What makes this asset interesting is how many ways it gets paid. Nearly every dollar here is a mechanical royalty, earned when the song is streamed, downloaded, or sold on a physical disc. Streaming supplies 65% of the last twelve months. Physical sales still supply 20%, four decades after release, and downloads another 12%. The rest comes from sheet music, lyric and guitar-tab sites, and a karaoke app. 

For an investor, the case is the shape of the income. A decades-old song that pays through streaming, physical, downloads and print at the same time, in more than ninety countries. The last three trailing-twelve-month periods landed within roughly 8% of each other. That is a settled, format-diversified income line on a song that has already proven it survives the arrival of each new format.

Air Supply are one of the most commercially successful soft rock acts of the 1980s, a British Australian duo whose run of adult contemporary ballads made them a fixture of the decade's charts and who continue to tour internationally more than forty years on. "Just as I Am" was the lead single from their self-titled 1985 album on Arista, released in May 1985. It reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the duo's last major chart entry there; the album itself was certified gold and peaked at number 26 on the Billboard 200. The song had a life before that version: Rob Hegel wrote it with Alice Cooper guitarist Dick Wagner in 1982 and recorded it himself first, three years before Air Supply.

Earnings Note. 1H2022 and 2H2022 contain catch-up payments (approximately $610 and $480 respectively). The 1H2022 catch-up is approximately $460 from YouTube and $150 from Facebook. The 2H2022 catch-up is approximately $320 from YouTube and $160 in mechanical settlements from the NMPA ($85), Amazon ($38) and a miscellaneous settlement ($34). Any further catch-up payments are payable to the buyer.