Royalty income has one problem: it is tied to you. It rises when you are hot and thins when you are not. Equity does not care whether you released this year.

That is the reason so many artists and athletes end up buying into drinks brands, studios, sneaker labels and, increasingly, listed companies. They are converting attention, which is temporary, into ownership, which is not.

You do not need a nine-figure catalogue to run the same play. A regular amount moved into shares of real businesses is the retail version of it.

The mechanism is identical. Only the size changes.