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Bob Dylan Sells Entire Catalog of Songs to Universal Music Publishing
- blakesterz 6y agoWow, apparently that's some BIG money: "Terms were not disclosed, but a source tells Variety that the deal was easily in nine figures. Since 80% of Stevie Nicks’ publishing catalog was acquired by Primary Wave last week for a reported $100 million, the Dylan catalog probably drew a number well above that." I read that Imagine Dragons sold all their songs for over $100 million as well. ( https://variety.com/2020/music/news/imagine-dragons-publishing-concord-1234737044/ https://variety.com/2020/music/news/imagine-dragons-publishi... )
- ginko 6y agoI wonder what he'd need so much money for. Especially considering his age.
- Uhhrrr 6y ago"Family" is the obvious guess.
- coldtea 6y agoAfter 2-3 million you don't really "need" money for anything yourself. You take them for family, because you can, to not let it go away, because you want the power that comes with it, and for extravagance. But not for "need".
- ngold 6y agoThere's a great story about the police getting a call for a homeless man wandering around a super posh neighborhood. Turned out to be bob dylan, I think he might have been house hunting.
- artificialLimbs 6y agoOr you have that much money because you need to invent air conditioning, nuclear power, water treatment plants, or Tesla. Little things like that..
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoWhat do you mean by your so called "need"?
- coldtea 6y agoThe casual/dictionary one. With 3-4 million (less in many countries) all your needs are covered for life. You wont die or have any harmful effect (lack of job, nutricion, housing, clothing, health coverage) when you don't get to have more, except for things common to everybody like natural death, accidents etc. If you go for more, you do it for various wants, not for needs. Even when it comes to happiness, there's a plataeu at around that level: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/map-happiness-benchmark_n_5592194?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHmWYAIFfzsAISH6pUFmI1FScWWxGaMG_zuVnm2ggRhJIhR1AEpi82ClWGpNMNIEPFWgGK88wXJOxnw_XSEgzHxBSx8Lujg76-T5t_1MugOVOCoBrjpCig9MnOoD3ulps0FmDhcA3u7ws-5uOf5irglNnVJh74BNhkTBqDmO98C_ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/map-happiness-benchmark_n_559...
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago> lack of job, nutricion, housing, clothing, health coverage Minimum wage is enough for this. And the link you shared couldn't get the analysis more wrong just to come up with clickbaity title. They are taking average happiness of state and average wage, and even then the data doesn't look like it is plateauing.
- coldtea 6y ago>Minimum wage is enough for this. Minimum wage? LOL. Even with a $80,000 salary, in the US a medical or other emergency (e.g. getting fired in a bad economy), can leave you unemployed, homeless, or living with a big debt. Even worse so for your retirement prospects (or lack thereof). With a few cool million in the bank you don't need to worry about any of those things. >And the link you shared couldn't get the analysis more wrong just to come up with clickbaity title. They are taking average happiness of state and average wage, and even then the data doesn't look like it is plateauing. Missed this part, linked to from the article? https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.abstract Or the fact that "non plateuing" still shows clear diminishing returns... Why exactly do you think e.g. 10 million will make you any happier than e.g. 5 million (never mind anywhere close to double as happy)?
- robbrown451 6y agoWell I'd also wonder what he'd need to retain ownership for. For some people that's important, but others it's not, especially if they trust the new stewards.
- Andrex 6y agoIt was less likely that Dylan was looking to unload his catalogue, and more likely Universal were just extremely hungry for it. At that point you can name the price.
- jankassens 6y agoIf he thinks he'd have enough money by selling for $x, he should probably take $x + $y and donate $y to some cause.
- toyg 6y agoHe has 6 children, 2 ex-wives, and I don’t know how many grandchildren. I can think of a couple of reasons they could use some cash. Also, this settles what could have been a pretty thorny inheritance issue.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Especially considering his age. A lawyer might call this "cold hand" control. He, like every other rich old person, is probably setting up a complex will to control how his wealth functions after his death (the cold hand from the grave). If he gives a song to someone, that person can do what they want with it. They could keep the money. Sell the song. Or just sit on it and let it never be played again. The dead man would not be in control. But if he convert that song into a pile of cash, and inserts that cash into a trust, then the dead man can exercise more direct/itemized control for many years to come. Give your house to your son and the day after you die he can sell it. But fund a trust to "administer" the house and you can tell the kid he can live in it but never sell it. Even decades later, the dead hand still controls the house and behavior of the child. Rich people do these things. When I was a law student working at a legal clinic, maybe 1/4 of the clients were old people who wanted to leave their house to their daughter but didn't want her to sell the day after they died. My advice was always to not do this because it burdened the daughter immensely. They didn't care. They wanted the house to continue in the family forever regardless.
- chrisdhoover 6y agoCold hand makes sense. Frank Zappa’s estate left his family at odds. Dylan could avoid that with careful planning.
- sandworm101 6y ago(Generic situation, not an ethics violation): One couple I talked to wanted to give their house to their infant grandson. So long as Billy lived in the house his parents could stay too. (Parents effectively passed over, avoiding some taxation issue.) I had a standard approach to this: So you don't want Billy to join the army? What if Billy wants to be a fighter pilot? Then he won't then be living in the house. What if he is offered a great job in New York? Do you want him to turn that job down in order to keep his parents living your house? When Little Billy is 50 years old, and you have been dead for decades, do you still want him opening up your will to ask your permission before he makes a life choice? Instead, how about we let him live in the house until he is 25 and then he can sell it?
- dfxm12 6y agoI wonder why he needs the liquidity. I'm sure he's making a ton of money from royalties alone. Even to his ancestors, it's probably better off long term, and good enough short term, to leave the catalog than cash.
- jchrisa 6y agoI figure it's more about his legacy. Better to have the music commercially exploited by experts than by a family office.
- whiddershins 6y agoDylan isn’t in the same ballpark as the artists you are mentioning, I would have imagined his catalog to be an order of magnitude more valuable.
- adventured 6y agoI consider Tom Petty to be a vastly superior artist to Britney Spears. She has far greater commercial appeal however and her music is worth more today if you're selling a catalog. The same would factor in to selling the Dylan catalog. Dylan's music is not very popular with young people and will not be very popular in the future (see: Elvis, Cher, Neil Diamond, Clapton, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Rod Stewart, Chicago, etc; their music doesn't sell at all like it used to), although I'm sure it'll be redone endlessly. Do young people care about Simon & Garfunkel? Not in the least and they won't tomorrow either. That music will all fade by the year, relegated to a small fraction of the interest it once had, as the primary generation or two that listened to it die. After 60 years Dylan has sold less than the Backstreet Boys. He produced relatively few hits compared to other renowned, popular artists. His style of music doesn't lend itself to vast commercial success. Someone will pay a premium to acquire his catalog because he's such a great artist and it's a large & influential catalog, however there is a practical limit to that.
- NaOH 6y agoYou don't seem to be accounting for how widely covered Dylan material has historically been. There are plenty of Dylan songs that as far back as the 1960s brought more sales for others than for him. This has continued throughout his career. For example, one 1997 Dylan song was in the top 50 UK sales in 2010 and all told has been covered by more than 450 other artists. In the last five years, official releases of past Grateful Dead concerts have contained at least 30 Dylan songs. It's 600 Dylan songs and at least 10 times that in cover versions which continue earning money.
- whiddershins 6y agoA quick google search shows tom petty has sold 80 million records and Britney Spears 100 million. I think you are mis-gauging what happens to music over the course of decades. Bubble gum pop and similarly positioned types of hip-hop etc do very well when they are in fashion, but don’t earn as much consistently over the long haul. Dylan’s catalogue could plausibly still earn 50 years from now.
- hardtke 6y agoThe only way to justify these prices is movie/TV/advertising licensing which is negotiated for each specific instance. Streaming brings in a fraction of cent per play so his catalog can't be generating more than a million dollars per year at best. Using his music to sell prescription drugs to nostalgic baby boomers watching Fox News is likely the plan.
- jlmorton 6y ago> Streaming brings in a fraction of cent per play so his catalog can't be generating more than a million dollars per year at best. Wow, I think that's wildly off the mark. Bob Dylan probably has several billion streams per year, if not more. On Spotify right now, his top 10 songs have a billion streams. Obviously those did not all occur in a single year, but Dylan's catalogue is deep, and Spotify is hardly the only platform. One billion streams per year is about $4 million on Spotify.
- olivermarks 6y agoI would assume other people have commercial rights percentages within Dylan's organization, management and past agreements, the sale price is highly unlikely to all go into Dylan's pockets. The big revenue comes from film and advertising licensing, we saw this when Michael Jackson (who owned the Beatles back catalog along with Sony who he was in a vicious battle with). Despite the claims in this article, Jackson didn't sell out many Beatles songs, it was Sony after he died who enabled and profited from Beatles songs in commercials and films. https://www.biography.com/news/michael-jackson-paul-mccartney-beatles-music-catalog https://www.biography.com/news/michael-jackson-paul-mccartne...
- hardtke 6y agoI was estimating a few hundred million streams per year (including All Along the Watchtower by Hendrix). The $4 million/billion streams gets split a few ways and the songwriter only gets a portion of that. Radio was more lucrative for songwriters since the songwriters got the bulk of the revenue (no payments to performers).
- robocat 6y agoMost importantly, he most likely carefully chose the contractual terms, controlling the use of his legacy how he wishes. And presumably prevents potential problems with disagreements between his descendants about something they all would have differing personal opinions about. How many times have you seen an artist's oeuvre or author's written works be misused by his or or her descendants?
- henrikschroder 6y agoThis was my first thought as well. The likelihood of those who inherit his copyrights to either squander them or being taken for a ride by the music industry is very high. So him selling them himself allows him to negotiate better conditions and more money, which will do more to protect his legacy than just holding on to them until his death.
- giarc 6y agoIn a CBC article, they added the following comparable. "Four years ago, when Michael Jackson's estate sold the remaining half-share that it owned in the artist's catalogue, it fetched $750 million US." Important to note that Michael Jackson's catalogue includes Beatles, Taylor Swift, Elvis, Sly and the Family Stone etc. https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/bob-dylan-universal-music-1.5831041 https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/bob-dylan-universal-mu...
- CamperBob2 6y agoWait, who? The Grammy-winning Las Vegas-based act is one of the most successful rock bands of the past decade, with hits like “Radioactive,” “Demons,” “Believer,” “Thunder” and “Whatever It Takes” from albums band made their mark with their global smash hits from their album “Night Visions,” “Smoke + Mirrors,” “Evolve” and “Origins.” I've never even heard of these guys, so the fact that their catalog is apparently worth $100M is making me feel old and out of touch. Oh, well.
- aeortiz 6y ago"Welcome to the new age" ;) https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=lyrics+radioactive https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=lyrics+ra...
- briankelly 6y agoI would be surprised if you haven't heard Radioactive - it's plastered on many TV commercials and featured heavily on radio.
- m463 6y agoTV commercials? Radio? Are these bridge words to communicate with older people? :) I remember feeling old when I ... decades ago ... was talking about CDs and the person I was talking to had never owned one. And now I suspect you can add "analog OTA transmission of music and videos" to that.
- briankelly 6y agoHaha I first learned of them from YouTube (when they tried to appeal to the hipster crowd) but now only hear them because of the TV (football commercials) and the rare cases I'm directly exposed to commercial FM radio. That is, when it isn't a classic rock (The Doors and Warrant) or "new" classic rock (RHCP and Linkin Park) station that some gas station or family-friendly bar/grill least-common-denomitored their way to putting on the speakers. My Mom is the only person I know who admits to liking them. We tried to get her Spotify but she wasn't interested. One day, very soon, the Imagine Dragons will be considered classic rock, but commercial radio will have long bit the dust and there won't be any classic rock stations left to call them it.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoOne reasonable take is that Dylan feels consolidated corporate gatekeepers can't have too much power.
- toyg 6y agoDylan doesn’t really give a shit about all that; if he ever did, he stopped a long time ago.
- cwkoss 6y agoIsn't Universal a consolidated corporate gatekeeper?
- athms 6y agoUniversal Music Publishing is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group (UMG), which is a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Vivendi. UMG is one of the big three global music publishers, behind Sony Music but in front of Warner Music.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI didnt even know he was still alive
- hluska 6y agoI wonder if this is a sign that the neverending tour is coming to an end. I saw Dylan play for the third time a few years ago and I had a strong sense it was the last time I would ever see him play live.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoYeah, that was my first thought. "I guess he's done performing these songs live and believes the best thing for his heirs is the cash."
- quercusa 6y agoThe contract probably gives him a non-exclusive right to perform his own material.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoOne wonders if he and his family felt it was better to sell now than later, because for all Dylan’s recognized greatness as a songwriter now, popular tastes can drastically change, especially now that guitar-based music is being eclipsed. There has been a lot of discussion recently about how young people’s familiarity with Elvis or even the Beatles is dwindling, and Dylan’s most acclaimed work was recorded in the same era as them.
- dehrmann 6y ago> young people’s familiarity with Elvis or even the Beatles is dwindling I'm not surprised you mentioned Elvis, but his catalog isn't as deep, the songwriting wasn't as good, and between his stint in Vegas, death, the impersonators, and rumors that he's not really dead, he seems like more of a punchline. I do wonder how this will play out with the Beatles, though. Funny enough, I think part of what will keep songs going is their inclusion in movies and TV shows, something artists are often reluctant to do.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoquite a lot of songs that Elvis had in his catalog were by the top professional song writers in his day, the thing is though that a lot of those songs are in a style of songwriting that was rendered somewhat outdated by Dylan and the Beatles.
- lb1lf 6y agoYour observation that guitar music is being eclipsed is too good an opportunity to pass up on to dig out the (possibly apocryphal) rejection of The Beatles back in 1962 - “We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.” —Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962
- dehrmann 6y agoWe might see a bunch of post-covid guitar groups.
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- CSMastermind 6y agoThis is just another example of the need for intellectual property reform. Ideally all of his songs would be public domain by now.
- SubGenius 6y agoHe's still alive though. Doesn't it make more sense for IP to cease with the author/artist's passing? I suppose one could argue that his early material has enough cultural significance that they should be in the public domain..
- stickfigure 6y agoNah. Give it 30 years and that's that. Ideally, every artist should live long enough to see what the rest of the world does with their work (both good and bad) when it's set free.
- toyg 6y agoThat could be pretty cruel. I don’t think even The Rolling Stones would want to see their songs reused by, say, neonazis. I reckon life + 30 would be enough. Both you and your kids (who knew you) should be able to die in the peaceful knowledge that your will was respected and your family benefited from your art. After that, your material is effectively History and should be fair game.
- thesteamboat 6y ago> That could be pretty cruel. I don’t think even The Rolling Stones would want to see their songs reused by, say, neonazis. Hard disagree from me. I mean it might hurt to see your work misused but that already happens all the time across different disciplines. The artist behind pepe the frog is not a fan of his work being adopted by white nationalists and that's terrible, but intellectual property law is not gonna stop anonymous people with photoshop on 4chan. I'm not saying I'm in favor of neonazis trying to turn music I like into their propaganda, but I can't see any reasonable way to fix this via IP law. Fundamentally the problem is not with reprehensible people remixing/reusing/appropriating culture, it's people holding reprehensible beliefs. The solution is to try and change their beliefs.
- 101008 6y agoThe subreddit for Bob Dylan made some interesting comments on this, you can follow the discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/bobdylan/comments/k8fj42/bob_dylan_sells_his_songwriting_catalog_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bobdylan/comments/k8fj42/bob_dylan_...
- fuball63 6y agoTeddit link: https://teddit.net/r/bobdylan/comments/k8fj42/bob_dylan_sells_his_songwriting_catalog_in/ https://teddit.net/r/bobdylan/comments/k8fj42/bob_dylan_sell...
- Scott_Sanderson 6y agoThat's neat, what's Teddit. A non-cluttered version of the site?
- Raphmedia 6y agoAbout Teddit is a free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. Teddit doesn't require you to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. The source is available on Codeberg at https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit. No JavaScript or ads All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Reddit Prevents Reddit from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 HTTP requests with ~24 MB)
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoAccording to them, "the alternative, privacy respecting, front page of internet." I doubt the legality of that though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- harel 6y agoThe artist is now known as Bob's Dealing.
- cwkoss 6y agoHey, Mr. Licensing Man Rent a song to me It's your IP And culture isn't free no more (Fun fact: Bob Dylan's prolific songwriting career was started by playing "open source" music)
- Scott_Sanderson 6y agoThe Scorsese doc that came out on PBS in 2005(?) called No Direction Home does a great job of showing the "open source" body of work on which Dylan and the other Greenwich Village musicians in his orbit in the folk scene drew upon. A Pete Seeger interview in the doc has particularly good commentary on the issue, with Seeger analogizing the playing and remaking of shared songs to how lawyers rewrite old laws and storytellers retell old stories to fit the new generations.
- okareaman 6y agoHow many clothes must a person wash? Before you call them grown up How many socks must they lose? Before they aren't a child The answer my friend is Downy Fabric Softener