Scott Cohen, co-founder of The Orchard and former Warner Music Group chief innovation officer, has written an opinion piece arguing that the music industry's biggest deals systematically exclude the artists whose catalogues and rights created the underlying value. He draws on his own experience selling The Orchard to Sony Music in 2015, when the artists whose music built the company's worth received nothing from the sale, to argue that royalty payments alone do not reflect an artist's true contribution to a company's value.

Cohen points to more than $12 billion in acquisitions and mergers of distribution platforms, royalty administrators and music catalogues announced in the first half of 2026, including Virgin Music's purchase of Downtown, the Primary Wave/Kobalt deal, the BMG-Concord merger, Warner Music's acquisition of Revelator, and Sony Music Publishing's purchase of Recognition's (formerly Hipgnosis) rights portfolio. He stresses he isn't accusing anyone of wrongdoing, but calls for a mechanism, inspired by Web3 principles, that would let artists and rightsholders financially participate when companies are sold for value built substantially on their music and data.