At a time when market volatility is rattling even the most seasoned portfolio managers, David Schulhof, CEO at MUSQ, LLC, The Music ETF, seems notably unbothered. His fund—the MUSQ Global Music Industry Index ETF (ticker: MUSQ)—is built around a thesis that is holding up exactly as designed: that music, as a global asset class, moves to its own beat.
While the broader market contends with geopolitical uncertainty and AI-driven whiplash, Schulhof points to something more fundamental: music is neither a luxury expense that is cut in a downturn nor a speculative bet on a single technology cycle. It is a daily habit; a universal constant; and increasingly, a sophisticated investment category with compelling structural growth drivers.
“We’re very pleased with the performance of MUSQ,” Schulhof tells The Wealth Advisor’s Scott Martin. “We’re giving investors total exposure to the global music industry across streaming and content and live music events and ticketing.”
An Uncorrelated Asset in a Correlated World
Client conversations around diversification tends to intensify whenever equity markets start showing stress. Traditional sector rotation between consumer staples and consumer discretionary goes only so far, and advisors are increasingly hunting for holdings that can behave differently when everything else moves in lockstep.
Music, Schulhof argues, is categorically different from conventional risk-on or risk-off plays. The fund has seen very little impact from the current geopolitical turbulence rattling broader markets, and he is quick to explain why.
“Music is an uncorrelated asset class,” says Schulhof. “You need to own something like music in your portfolio to weather enormous amounts of volatility like you’re seeing today.”
Data support this intuition. During COVID-19—arguably the sharpest demand shock in recent memory—music consumption did not collapse. It expanded. According to the IFPI’s Global Music Report, recorded music revenues grew 18.5% in 2021 and an additional 9% in 2022, even as other entertainment and consumer sectors struggled to recover. Consumers stuck at home began subscribing to multiple streaming services simultaneously, and monthly subscription fees held firm.
Schulhof points out that music streaming remains significantly underpriced relative to comparable entertainment services, costing “half or a third of what you pay for HBO Go or Hulu or Netflix.” That pricing gap is both a reflection of current value and a signal of where revenue can still go.
The fund’s holdings include some of the largest entertainment and technology businesses in the world, and a position in MUSQ aims to introduce a fundamentally different return profile—one that participates in a growing global industry without leaning on the same macro drivers that are currently under pressure.
The Full Ecosystem, Not Just a Slice
One of the more common misunderstandings about music investing is that it begins and ends with royalties. The private equity world has certainly made that impression—tens of billions of dollars have poured into music royalty acquisitions in recent years, with catalog deals for artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan commanding multiples that have compressed yields significantly. Schulhof acknowledges the appeal of royalty exposure but is direct about its limitations as a stand-alone allocation.
“As an investor, I think you don’t just want to be invested in music royalties,” he says. “You also want to have exposure to live music, to ticketing, to streaming, to equipment, to technology. You want to have a diversified approach.”
With roughly 30-plus holdings spanning every major segment of the music value chain, MUSQ aims to deliver exactly that kind of breadth. The fund breaks down to approximately 30% in streaming companies, another 30% in content and label businesses, a third in live music events and ticketing, and the remainder in equipment manufacturers and technology providers.
The streaming cohort includes Spotify Technology and Tencent Music Entertainment Group, among others. The content bucket captures Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and a meaningful allocation to the K-pop industry through names like Hybe, SM Entertainment, and YG Plus. Live entertainment exposure runs through Live Nation Entertainment, Sphere Entertainment, and European operators such as CTS Eventim. On the equipment and technology side, Yamaha, Roland, and Dolby Laboratories round out a portfolio that touches virtually every point at which money moves through music.
“So, we’re giving investors a really good cross-section around the growth of the music industry,” Schulhof notes.
The streaming opportunity alone represents significant scale. According to MIDiA Research, the global paid music streaming subscriber base closed 2024 at 818 million—the result of 85 million net new subscribers added in a single year. Goldman Sachs’s Music in the Air report, cited by MUSQ, projects the broader global music industry’s doubling from approximately $100 billion today to more than $200 billion by 2030. When that revenue flows through the ecosystem, content owners stand to benefit.
“Revenues are growing. And when you have all this revenue come in from paid streaming subscribers, 70% of those revenues get paid to the labels and to the publishers. So, they participate in the growth too,” explains Schulhof.
A Genuinely Global Fund
What separates MUSQ from a straightforward domestic music play is the geographic reach of its underlying index. The MUSQ Global Music Industry Index, calculated by Vettafi, LLC, aims to capture companies across every major music market—not just those in the United States.
“About half the fund is international equities, which most investors simply wouldn’t be familiar with unless you dug deep,” notes Schulhof. “And we’re a really nice, convenient way to invest across domestic companies and a lot of these foreign equities, which are hard to access and trade.”
The growth case for international markets is compelling. Emerging markets are driving some of the fastest expansion in recorded music revenue globally, fueled by increasing smartphone penetration and the onboarding of new streaming subscribers onto mobile platforms. Mobile expansion means music expansion, and the global subscriber runway remains long.
According to the IFPI’s Global Music Report 2023, cited by MUSQ, Sub-Saharan Africa posted recorded music revenue growth of more than 34% year-over-year, while Latin America and the Middle East/Africa each grew by roughly 26%.
Advisors working with clients who have concentrated domestic equity exposure may find meaningful diversification value in the fund’s international tilt, which is embedded structurally rather than requiring active management of individual foreign securities.
Where MUSQ Fits in a Portfolio
Categorizing MUSQ within traditional allocation frameworks takes some flexibility. The fund does not map neatly onto a single sleeve. It carries elements of growth thematic exposure through streaming and technology holdings, royalty-like income characteristics through its label and publishing positions, and dividend income—MUSQ pays a dividend—layered on top of equity upside. As of early March 2026, the fund’s net expense ratio was 0.76%, and it returned approximately 19% on both a NAV and market price basis over the one-year period ended December 31, 2025.
Schulhof frames MUSQ as something beyond a financial instrument: a window into the cultural moments and institutions that define how the world experiences music, from the Grammys and major film scores to the global live touring circuit.
“We view ourselves as a cultural ETF,” he says. “It’s a great way to get exposure to all these cultural events that are happening.”
MUSQ may also function as a client engagement tool. Every advisor has a client who lights up talking about a favorite artist, a festival they attended, or a concert they have been waiting years to see. MUSQ gives those clients a way to put conviction behind an industry they already follow closely—and gives advisors a natural entry point into a portfolio conversation that doesn’t feel like a pitch. The allocation becomes something worth talking about, not just holding.
Schulhof is also candid about the timing. With AI-driven portfolios showing early signs of stress, he sees a reallocation moment forming.
“I think everybody is realizing they’re all chasing after AI, AI, trying to juice their portfolios, and now they’re going to see it’s going to take a hit. And you want to be in other things,” he says. He’s careful to frame music as a complement, not a replacement: “We’re not saying you only want to be invested in music, but we think clients should be allocating 5% to 10% of their portfolios to music because these are very big companies.”
Amplify: Bringing the Music Industry to Wall Street
For advisors who want to more in-depth engagement, MUSQ has built something that doesn’t typically come with an ETF: a dedicated investment conference. The Amplify Music Investment Summit—a joint presentation with the Mondo.NYC Conference—is scheduled for May 8 at the Virgin Hotel in New York. The full-day program opens with a keynote from Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, in conversation with CNBC’s Jon Fortt, and moves through panels covering streaming, content and distribution, live music and ticketing, and AI and music technology.
Amplify is built specifically for the financial community—retail investors, family offices, RIAs, and wealth advisors looking to develop a more substantive understanding of the music industry as an investment category. Many of the CEOs from companies held in the MUSQ portfolio are expected to attend and speak, offering a level of direct access that is rare in thematic investing.
“You get a chance to hear up close and personal what they have to say. You can meet them,” Schulhof notes.
Where many investment conferences keep executives at arm’s length behind a podium, Amplify is designed around proximity—to the people running the companies, to the verticals driving growth, and to the investment theses shaping the next decade of music.
“We’re bringing the music industry to Wall Street,” Schulhof says. “This has never been done before.”
Tickets are available now, with early registration offered at a lower price point.
The Bottom Line
Advisors are building portfolios in an environment where correlations have tightened and the AI trade is showing cracks, so genuine diversification is harder to find than it sounds. MUSQ seeks to offer something the traditional sector grid cannot—globally diversified, structurally uncorrelated exposure to an industry that hasn’t stopped growing and that the people it serves have never stopped loving.
“We view music like food, like water,” Schulhof says. “I don’t know who doesn’t consume music.”
The strategy’s underlying thesis is straightforward: music is not going away, the revenue base is expanding globally, and the companies that power the ecosystem—from streaming platforms to live event operators to content owners—are positioned to grow with it.
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Additional Resources
- Contact MUSQ
- Why Invest in MUSQ
- Investor Deck
- MUSQ White Paper
- MUSQ Fact Sheet
- Invest in MUSQ
- 2026 Amplify Music Investment Summit
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Risk Disclosures
All investing involves risk, and asset allocation and diversification do not guarantee a profit or protection against a loss. The investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor’s shares, when redeemed, might be worth more or less than their original cost. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks, as well as other risks specific to the particular ETF.
Shares are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. ETF shares are traded on exchanges and are traded and priced throughout the trading day. ETFs permit an investor to purchase a selling interest in a portfolio of stocks throughout the trading day. Because ETFs trade on an exchange, ETF shares are bought and sold at market price (not NAV). The prices of ETFs may sometimes vary significantly from the NAVs of an ETFs’ underlying securities. Brokerage commissions will reduce returns. The returns shown do not represent the returns you would receive if you traded shares at other times. The market price returns are based on the official closing price of an ETF share or, if the official closing price isn’t available, the midpoint between the national best bid and national best offer (“NBBO”) as of the time the ETF calculates current NAV per share. NAVs are calculated using prices as of 4:00 PM Eastern Time.
MUSQ Global Music Industry ETF is offered by prospectus. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other important information can be found in the MUSQ ETF prospectus, which should be read carefully before investing and can be obtained by visiting our website www.musqetf.com, or by calling 888-MUSQETF (888-687-7383).
Exchange Traded Concepts, LLC serves as the investment advisor to the Fund. The Fund is distributed by SEI Investments Distribution Co (SIDCO). SIDCO is not affiliated with Exchange Traded Concepts, LLC..
