Billboard magazine estimates that over the past three years, revenues generated by the publishing of Sean “Diddy” Combs' master recording catalog and songs he wrote that appear on his albums have amounted to approximately $3 million per year.
The biggest asset in his favor, not included in the above estimate, is his ownership of Bad Boy Records, through which he owns his masters and publishing rights.
But the activity his own artist catalog has generated — averaging about 147,000 album units per year for the past three years — isn’t particularly large for someone generally considered a superstar, and aside from his current situation, which includes several lawsuits alleging sexual assault, a CNN video of him assaulting ex-girlfriend Kathy in 2016 (a situation that was also included in Kathy’s own lawsuit against him, which was settled last fall), and a reported federal sex trafficking investigation, the catalog presents a challenge for music asset traders looking to buy it.
In addition to the public criticism, one reason is that his catalog isn't issued under a single, identifiable brand name like most artists' catalogs. His catalog is issued under five main artist names: Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy & the Family, P. Diddy, Diddy and Diddy Dirty Money. Music industry executives say that makes marketing difficult. To add to the confusion, in 2017 he decided to henceforth be known as Love, or Brother Love, and released his final album, “Off the Grid,” under that moniker, but neither name appears to be associated with Combs' musical endeavors in Luminate's database.
Confusingly, his latest album, Off The Grid, was technically released under Diddy's name, and is credited with 453,000 units in 2023, according to Billboard's calculations based on Luminate data from the weekly Billboard 200 chart. However, the songs with the most activity on these albums are collaborations, such as “Creepin',” whose remixes are credited to The Weeknd, Metro Boomin, and 21 Savage, which appear to capture all streams for the song, not just Diddy's remix. As a result, these streams are not counted toward his artist page, and Diddy is only credited with 97,000 album consumption units in 2023 across all albums released under his name, including Off The Grid.
Taking into account Combs' catalog activity and sales, which were lower than expected, Billboard estimates that Combs' combined catalog would bring in about $2.4 million in master recording revenues. Meanwhile, his publishing catalog, with its many co-writers, brings in about $600,000 per year for Diddy. Taking into account all his co-writers, Diddy would likely receive about $225,000 of the publishing revenues his own albums generate. Combined, this amounts to about $2.625 million per year, which, when calculated using a blended 16x multiplier (the sales rate for many popular catalogs these days), would put Diddy's artist catalog's value at about $42 million.
A representative for Diddy did not respond to a request for comment.
There are some caveats to this valuation, chief among them being that Diddy has also been a prolific producer for many of the artists on his Bad Boy label over the years, and his master recordings of other artists are likely still attractive to music investors, but in September 2023, he announced that he would reassign his publishing rights to songwriters and artists who helped build Bad Boy, including Maze, Faith Evans, The Loxx, 112, and the estate of Notorious B.I.G.
According to the article, Combs had turned down offers to sell his publishing catalog. Most of those authors had the right to cease publishing and reclaim their rights after 35 years, but only in the United States, not worldwide. Combs would otherwise have continued to own those rights under U.S. law. What became of those worldwide rights remains unclear.
However, taken overall, and considering all the other artists he has worked with, ownership of the Bad Boy master recording catalog could provide substantial income and possibly a potential valuation far in excess of the estimates cited above for his own master recording catalog.