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One 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

One 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 ago
  quite 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in his day, the thing is though that a lot of those songs are in a style of songwriting that was rendered somewhat outdated by Dylan and the Beatles.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 ago
Your 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 ago
  We might see a bunch of post-covid guitar groups.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Decca were proven wrong in a year or so, so that was indeed a short-lived change. Meanwhile, rock has stopped being "edgy" for 20+ years, and has stopped topping the charts and streams for equally long.
- fiftyacorn 6y ago
  The set they played Decca wasn't their best tracks at the time. It's on anthology PT 1 The set they later played to George Martin was much more like the classic Beatles
war1025 6y ago
> even the Beatles I really enjoy listening to Bob Dylan now and again. However, I've always found the Beatles to be extremely overrated. I guess it's all subjective.
- brtkdotse 6y ago
  Same, but vice versa.
- pstuart 6y ago
  The official rivalry is between the Beatles and the Stones, and some of us have even embraced both.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  I think Dylan has aged much better than the Beatles have: their sound is very emblematic of a particular era of music in my mind. Of course, it may be that their focus on heavy, lush production, particularly in their later work, makes them particularly vulnerable to changes in taste. Dylan's work, on the other hand, is generally much more spare and focused on guitar and voice.
  - jasomill 6y ago
    Don't forget harmonica! Also, your description excludes much of Dylan's extensive[1] catalog, starting with Bringing it All Back Home and including some of his best work like Nashville Skyline and Blood on the Tracks, much of which features diverse instrumentation and extensive, if not always "lush", production work. [1] "Bob Dylan has released 39 studio albums, 94 singles, 26 notable extended plays, 50 music videos, 12 live albums, 15 volumes comprising The Bootleg Series, 20 compilation albums, 15 box sets, seven soundtracks as main contributor, five music home videos and two non-music home videos." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Beatles _seem_ overrated because of how much influence they have had. Every great musician after them has probably learned from them, imitated them and improved upon their techniques. So, if you listen to recent artists first and then go back and listen to Beatles, they sound more of the same, even though in their time they were kilometers ahead of everyone else.
grawprog 6y ago
I wonder how much of this is because of copyrights. Look at the way a lot of older music has been preserved in modern times, through the use of sampling, covers and other things. The Beatles, Elvis, even Dylan played a lot of covers of old blues tunes or other songs that had been lost by that current generation and were made popular again. The way laws work now, that's not really something people can do any more without being sued or paying licensing fees. I don't see a lot of Beatles songs being sampled, because it costs a lot, so a lot of young people who might have heard some of their music won't really get the chance. I know me personally, i've only discovered a lot of older music after hearing a cover or a sample in a song that's made me go back and look for the original. Look at reggae music to see the difference. Songs from the 50's and 60's are still being remade, covered, remixed and used in modern songs. A lot of reggae fans still know the big names from that time because you still hear their songs.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yeah in essence they are not well known because they haven't adapted to the times They block any video with a sample of their song on YT even if they would have made money from it So, tough. Back to being unknown then
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    The beginning of the end of guitar music may have been the day that Metallica sued Napster.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      At that point, guitar music had already been giving way in Europe to beats-based music. While initially North America scoffed at trends like eurodance, in retrospect it was only a matter of time before the electronic-music wave hit America, too. Also, the turn of the millennium is when hip-hop in the USA started to go from a somewhat niche and edgy genre to completely mainstream and ascendant over guitar music. Metallica had nothing to do with it.
coldtea 6y ago
>One 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 People who bought them for 300M don't think it will "drastically change" to devalue it any time soon...
birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
The alternative would be to release the songs as public domain like Tom Lehrer [1]. Disney is making movies out of public domain stories because it's easier without the licensing overhead. Same is true for songs. Elvis and the Beatles fade because their songs cannot be shared without learning about the licensing agreements. A fate that Dylan could have avoided. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  Generally speaking these kinds of arrangements are made with the expectation that the company managing these copyrights are going to generously sublicense everything to maximize profit. So, for example, Dylan will be selling his songs off to people who want you to listen to them as much as possible. Nobody spends 9 figures on a song's rights without expecting to make 10 figures on it. The Beatles followed the Disney/Nintendo school of copyright management, where you just hold onto something valuable for the fear that actually making money off the thing you own will make it worth less in the future. This is what gives you shit like the "Disney Vault" where you periodically take old works off the market entirely for the sake of artificial scarcity. In this particular case, The Beatles were a massive hole in pretty much every digital music store's back catalog, so much so that them finally selling digital copies of their songs was considered actual tech news. Whether or not a work actually thrives once it's been escheated to the public domain is really complicated. You see, the act of reusing something in the public domain also grants you copyright over anything you added to the work. Disney's reuse of public domain stories not only saved them money, but it also took things out of the public domain, in a sense. Yes, all of the old Hans Christen Andersen stories are very much open to reuse, but only if you're careful not to use the bits Disney added into their adaptations - and there are a lot of them. So if your goal is to just keep the work accessible and relevant, something akin to a Creative Commons ShareAlike license might be more appropriate than a public domain dedication.
  - jasomill 6y ago
    The Beatles followed the Disney/Nintendo school of copyright management, where you just hold onto something valuable for the fear that actually making money off the thing you own will make it worth less in the future. I don't know, sitting on one's catalog until digital music storefronts are widely established and you've been holding out long enough that the eventual release is a newsworthy event seems like a perfectly reasonable marketing decision if you ask me, typical back-catalog revenue numbers being what they are.
quercusa 6y ago
Age and expectations for higher tax rates may have convinced him and his advisors that the time was right.
vl 6y ago
> There has been a lot of discussion recently about how young people’s familiarity with Elvis or even the Beatles is dwindling 10 years ago my wife and I went to a cafe after Ringo’s concert. We met there her university classmate with boyfriend, excitedly we told them “We are coming from the Ringo’s concert! Did you go?”, they asked “Who is Ringo?” One of the life-forming experiences for me.

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 ago
quite 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 ago

Your 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 ago
We might see a bunch of post-covid guitar groups.
coldtea 6y ago
Decca were proven wrong in a year or so, so that was indeed a short-lived change. Meanwhile, rock has stopped being "edgy" for 20+ years, and has stopped topping the charts and streams for equally long.
fiftyacorn 6y ago
The set they played Decca wasn't their best tracks at the time. It's on anthology PT 1 The set they later played to George Martin was much more like the classic Beatles

war1025 6y ago

> even the Beatles I really enjoy listening to Bob Dylan now and again. However, I've always found the Beatles to be extremely overrated. I guess it's all subjective.

brtkdotse 6y ago
Same, but vice versa.
pstuart 6y ago
The official rivalry is between the Beatles and the Stones, and some of us have even embraced both.
jgwil2 6y ago
I think Dylan has aged much better than the Beatles have: their sound is very emblematic of a particular era of music in my mind. Of course, it may be that their focus on heavy, lush production, particularly in their later work, makes them particularly vulnerable to changes in taste. Dylan's work, on the other hand, is generally much more spare and focused on guitar and voice.
- jasomill 6y ago
  Don't forget harmonica! Also, your description excludes much of Dylan's extensive[1] catalog, starting with Bringing it All Back Home and including some of his best work like Nashville Skyline and Blood on the Tracks, much of which features diverse instrumentation and extensive, if not always "lush", production work. [1] "Bob Dylan has released 39 studio albums, 94 singles, 26 notable extended plays, 50 music videos, 12 live albums, 15 volumes comprising The Bootleg Series, 20 compilation albums, 15 box sets, seven soundtracks as main contributor, five music home videos and two non-music home videos." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
Beatles _seem_ overrated because of how much influence they have had. Every great musician after them has probably learned from them, imitated them and improved upon their techniques. So, if you listen to recent artists first and then go back and listen to Beatles, they sound more of the same, even though in their time they were kilometers ahead of everyone else.

grawprog 6y ago

I wonder how much of this is because of copyrights. Look at the way a lot of older music has been preserved in modern times, through the use of sampling, covers and other things. The Beatles, Elvis, even Dylan played a lot of covers of old blues tunes or other songs that had been lost by that current generation and were made popular again. The way laws work now, that's not really something people can do any more without being sued or paying licensing fees. I don't see a lot of Beatles songs being sampled, because it costs a lot, so a lot of young people who might have heard some of their music won't really get the chance. I know me personally, i've only discovered a lot of older music after hearing a cover or a sample in a song that's made me go back and look for the original. Look at reggae music to see the difference. Songs from the 50's and 60's are still being remade, covered, remixed and used in modern songs. A lot of reggae fans still know the big names from that time because you still hear their songs.

raverbashing 6y ago
Yeah in essence they are not well known because they haven't adapted to the times They block any video with a sample of their song on YT even if they would have made money from it So, tough. Back to being unknown then
- nitrogen 6y ago
  The beginning of the end of guitar music may have been the day that Metallica sued Napster.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    At that point, guitar music had already been giving way in Europe to beats-based music. While initially North America scoffed at trends like eurodance, in retrospect it was only a matter of time before the electronic-music wave hit America, too. Also, the turn of the millennium is when hip-hop in the USA started to go from a somewhat niche and edgy genre to completely mainstream and ascendant over guitar music. Metallica had nothing to do with it.

coldtea 6y ago

>One 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 People who bought them for 300M don't think it will "drastically change" to devalue it any time soon...

birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago

The alternative would be to release the songs as public domain like Tom Lehrer [1]. Disney is making movies out of public domain stories because it's easier without the licensing overhead. Same is true for songs. Elvis and the Beatles fade because their songs cannot be shared without learning about the licensing agreements. A fate that Dylan could have avoided. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683

kmeisthax 6y ago
Generally speaking these kinds of arrangements are made with the expectation that the company managing these copyrights are going to generously sublicense everything to maximize profit. So, for example, Dylan will be selling his songs off to people who want you to listen to them as much as possible. Nobody spends 9 figures on a song's rights without expecting to make 10 figures on it. The Beatles followed the Disney/Nintendo school of copyright management, where you just hold onto something valuable for the fear that actually making money off the thing you own will make it worth less in the future. This is what gives you shit like the "Disney Vault" where you periodically take old works off the market entirely for the sake of artificial scarcity. In this particular case, The Beatles were a massive hole in pretty much every digital music store's back catalog, so much so that them finally selling digital copies of their songs was considered actual tech news. Whether or not a work actually thrives once it's been escheated to the public domain is really complicated. You see, the act of reusing something in the public domain also grants you copyright over anything you added to the work. Disney's reuse of public domain stories not only saved them money, but it also took things out of the public domain, in a sense. Yes, all of the old Hans Christen Andersen stories are very much open to reuse, but only if you're careful not to use the bits Disney added into their adaptations - and there are a lot of them. So if your goal is to just keep the work accessible and relevant, something akin to a Creative Commons ShareAlike license might be more appropriate than a public domain dedication.
- jasomill 6y ago
  The Beatles followed the Disney/Nintendo school of copyright management, where you just hold onto something valuable for the fear that actually making money off the thing you own will make it worth less in the future. I don't know, sitting on one's catalog until digital music storefronts are widely established and you've been holding out long enough that the eventual release is a newsworthy event seems like a perfectly reasonable marketing decision if you ask me, typical back-catalog revenue numbers being what they are.

quercusa 6y ago

Age and expectations for higher tax rates may have convinced him and his advisors that the time was right.

vl 6y ago

> There has been a lot of discussion recently about how young people’s familiarity with Elvis or even the Beatles is dwindling 10 years ago my wife and I went to a cafe after Ringo’s concert. We met there her university classmate with boyfriend, excitedly we told them “We are coming from the Ringo’s concert! Did you go?”, they asked “Who is Ringo?” One of the life-forming experiences for me.