Mercuriadis liked to say that in the streaming age, when more people were paying more for music than ever, an investment in songs was as safe as one in oil or gold, especially the hits Hipgnosis was stockpiling. There will never be another Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Chic’s Good Times or Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, all of which he boasted were among the 65,413 songs Hipgnosis would acquire for $2.2 billion. This trove, he pitched, would only become more valuable. As Mercuriadis noted on a podcast in 2021, there were roughly 30 million streaming subscribers when Hipgnosis made its debut in 2018. Now, he estimated, there were 450 million. What would Hipgnosis be worth when the number reached 2 billion, which Mercuriadis predicted would happen within the next decade?