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By the time you see this email, UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP, which went public this morning on Amsterdam's Euronext stock exchange with a healthy jolt, will be worth anywhere from $mind-boggling to $holy-s***.

What, one wonders, will the artists get?

It's been a dizzying few years for the world's biggest record company. VIVENDI, which was UMG's parent company from 2000 until today, rejected an $8.5 billion offer for it in 2013, when the music business was in the midst of a more-than-decade-long slide. By the time China's TENCENT began buying into UMG in 2019 (it now owns 20 percent), the industry was on the rebound and the company's valuation had ballooned to $30 billion. When BILL ACKMAN's special purpose acquisition company PERSHING SQUARE tried to buy a stake in June, it was up to $40 billion; that deal fell through, but Ackman eventually picked up 10 percent of UMG through his PERSHING SQUARE HOLDINGS hedge fund. On Monday, Vivendi set the reference price for today's stock listing at 18.5 euros per share, which would value the world's biggest record company at $39 billion. The stock opened today quite a bit higher than that.

The timing for the public listing appears to be phenomenal for the home of DRAKE, BILLIE EILISH, the WEEKND and (maybe more important, considering the off-the-chart value of the catalog market) the BEATLES and QUEEN. The streaming market, which has fueled the industry's comeback, continues to boom, and just a week ago the RIAA reported that the recorded music business in the US enjoyed 27 percent growth in revenues in the first half of 2021. UMG has reported considerable growth in 2021 as well. And as the Wall Street Journal notes (paywall), if you want to invest in the recorded music market, there are few other major options: Less than 15 percent of WARNER MUSIC's stock is available for public trading, and the only way to invest in SONY MUSIC is to buy stock in its much bigger parent company.

On the other hand, publishing companies like ROUND HILL and HIPGNOSIS and the streaming companies themselves offer alternatives for investors, and the booming streaming market may be running up against a period in which much of its potential growth is in emerging markets where subscription prices will have to be lower than in Europe and North America. Not everyone agrees with the rosy assessments of analysts and banks—don't forget, Bill Ackman's initial SPAC deal fell through just a few months ago because his own investors balked. There are always caveats.

But mostly there's optimism around what may be "the music business story of the year." At least on the business end.

UMG's well-liked CEO, LUCIAN GRAINGE, who has shepherded the company through its growth years, is getting a bonus for taking the company public that could easily exceed $150 million, depending on the company's market cap. Using current music-industry math, a UMG artist like Drake, Billie Eilish or the Weeknd—or any of the thousands of more modestly successful artists whose creative work is behind the rapid growth of the streaming companies whose existence is behind the rapid growth of UMG—would need their songs to be streamed 37.5 billion times in SPOTIFY to earn the equivalent of that bonus. Of course most artists (and songwriters and producers and everyone else involved in making music) aren't looking for that, and they aren't standing by their mailboxes waiting for stock options to show up either. What they generally want is fair and reasonable pay for their work. And they may find themselves wondering today how those millions and billions of dollars will trickle down into the day-to-day royalty flow. And asking what it means when their record company is worth 11 figures but streams are still paying out in fractions of fractions of a penny.

The strict business answers to those questions may be easy to answer. But the optics will rattle around in the days to come, along with Universal's stock price.

Rest in Peace

SARAH DASH, whose piercing soprano cut through several decades' worth of popular music. She was one-third of the '70s soul and funk powerhouse Labelle (and of that band's '60s predecessor, Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles), and went on to minor success with a disco- and dance-flavored solo career and major success as a backing and featured vocalist with the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Nile Rodgers and others.