Sia sells half her catalogue to Pophouse: why stars now sell a stake, not the whole thing

Pophouse Entertainment, the Swedish investment firm co-founded by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus, has bought a 50% stake in Sia's publishing and master music rights. The headline number everyone is quoting, $180 million, has not been disclosed by Pophouse or by Sia. TMZ reported it first, from "docs we obtained", legal documents setting out how the money is treated in her divorce. Rolling Stone then said it had confirmed the $180 million figure itself. Variety and Music Business Worldwide attribute the figure to TMZ, and MBW notes that Pophouse's own announcement confirmed the stake but not the price. So: the 50% is confirmed by the buyer, and the price is reported by two outlets but disclosed by neither party.

What exactly did Pophouse buy?

Half of both sides of Sia's catalogue: the songs (publishing) and the recordings (masters). That wording appears in the announcement from Reed Smith, the law firm that advised Pophouse. Sia was represented by King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, and Pophouse made it through its debut fund, Pophouse Fund I, which closed at its €1 billion hard cap in March 2025.

If the $180 million is right, MBW points out it implies about $360 million for the whole catalogue. That catalogue is unusually wide for a pop star, because so much of it was written for other people. Sia co-wrote Rihanna's "Diamonds" and co-wrote and sang on David Guetta's "Titanium", per MBW, which also notes she extended a worldwide publishing deal with Sony/ATV (now Sony Music Publishing) in 2015. How that publishing deal interacts with Pophouse's half is not public.

How does the divorce shape the money?

According to the TMZ documents, $165 million relates to songs written before her marriage to Daniel Bernad, including "Chandelier", "Titanium" and "Cheap Thrills". Bernad agreed to waive any claim to that portion in return for $1 million. The remaining $15 million, tied to songs written during the marriage, goes into escrow for the two to settle later. It is a rare look at how a catalogue deal is carved up by when each song was written, and a reminder that for songwriters, the date on a work tape can be worth millions.

Why does Pophouse want her?

Pophouse is not a passive royalty fund. Variety lists it as an investor in ABBA Voyage, ABBA The Museum, the Avicii Experience and "Mamma Mia! The Party", alongside catalogue stakes in Iron Maiden, Tina Turner, KISS, Cyndi Lauper, Avicii and Swedish House Mafia. Its two earlier deals this year, Tina Turner in March and Iron Maiden in July, both included name, image and likeness (NIL) rights. Its KISS deal did too, and a KISS avatar show is slated for 2028, MBW reports.

Sia's deal, as described by Pophouse and its lawyers, covers publishing and masters; neither MBW, Variety nor Reed Smith mentions NIL rights or an avatar. Rolling Stone goes further. Citing an unnamed source familiar with the deal, it reports that Sia plans an immersive avatar concert built on her songs, still in early planning and at least a couple of years out. It also reports that Pophouse's stake is limited to publishing and master recording rights and does not include her name and likeness. Neither point appears in the announcement quotes carried by Variety or in Reed Smith's release, so we treat both as Rolling Stone's reporting rather than a party's statement. What Pophouse has said, in quotes carried by Variety, is that it will give Sia strategic support and creative resources, and help her develop new ventures while looking after her existing work.

How is this different from Taylor Swift's buyback?

It is close to the opposite deal. In May 2025 Swift announced she had bought back her recordings, including the original recordings of her first six albums, after they passed from Big Machine to Scooter Braun and then to Shamrock Capital. In her letter she said what she had always wanted was to own her music outright, "no partnership, with full autonomy". Swift's leverage came from the other half of the copyright: because she still owned her songs, she could re-record the albums and pull listeners towards the new versions.

Sia, by choice, has done the reverse. She sold half of both the songs and the recordings to an investor, and in return she gets a large upfront payment plus a partner whose business is staging and extending catalogues. Swift fought to get rid of a co-owner she didn't choose. Sia picked one.

What we think

A half sale is a bet that the artist is still worth more than the catalogue. Full buyouts of the past decade priced songs as bonds: steady royalties, discounted back to today. A 50% stake prices something else. The buyer needs the artist awake, writing, touring, approving syncs and, in Pophouse's case, maybe one day standing in a motion-capture suit. Keeping Sia as an equal owner means she shares the upside of anything new built on the catalogue, and keeps an interest in saying no to bad uses of it. That is the strongest argument for partial sales, and for artists with leverage it is a better deal shape than selling everything.

But "partnership" is doing a lot of work in the press quotes, and the terms are not public. At 50/50, the details that matter are who decides on syncs, remixes and new formats, what happens on a deadlock, and who has the right to buy the other out. None of that has been disclosed. Our reading of Pophouse's pattern, from ABBA Voyage to the KISS and Tina Turner NIL deals, is that its business is extending catalogues into new formats. If Sia's NIL is genuinely outside this deal, as Rolling Stone reports, she keeps the most valuable lever for any avatar or AI-voice project: her consent. We would want any artist in her position to hold on to that, and to get it in writing.

The lesson for working musicians is about splits, not $180 million. The divorce carve-up shows that a catalogue's value can be sliced by when each song was written and who owned what. For writers at every level, the boring paperwork (registration dates, split sheets, who owns which master) is what decides who gets paid when a deal finally comes. Swift spent years re-recording four albums because she didn't own her masters. Sia could sell half on her terms because, it seems, she did.