Music Is a Red-Hot Asset Class in a New Thematic ETF Filing

Music-loving investors may soon be able to bet on their favorite melodies as a new entertainment-focused exchange-traded fund edges closer to reality.

Tidal ETF Trust is targeting the second quarter to launch the Clouty Tune ETF (ticker TUNE), a passive fund that would offer exposure to a global portfolio of companies engaged in music, media and entertainment, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

TUNE would join a tiny class of music-adjacent funds, including the genre-specific $3.2 million KPOP and Korean Entertainment ETF (KPOP), which started trading last year.

“There is really is no pure way to play the music industry, so this is a pretty unique fund,” said Athanasios Psarofagis, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Still, “it’s too niche for institutions. When they look at thematics, they look at it from a bigger level, like tech or innovation.”

The fund would passively track the Clouty Tune index, a gauge administered by Solactive AG with 50 companies with stock-price changes that typically align with digital music-consumption patterns, according to the filing.