Good morning, WMV continues the series on Catalogues as we update you on the latest developments in music rights acquisitions.
The latest R&B star to sell his catalogue is John Legend. The singer reportedly sold his catalog of music to DL Music IP LP, an affiliate of San Francisco-based KKR Credit Advisors and BMG Rights Management.
Bloomberg, reports that a UCC filing revealed that John, who recently released his eighth album Legend sold the copyrights as well as his right to receive royalties from songs dating from 2004-2021. This would include music from John Legend’s debut album “Get Lifted“(2004) and the smash hit “All Of Me” (2013).
DL Music IP LP now owns 50 percent of the musicians hits filled catalogue.
“It’s a great time to be a seller because the valuations are so high,” said Eli Ball, founder of Lyric Financial, a provider of financial services to the music community that’s owned by Utopia Music, Bloomberg reports. “Legend is still at the top of his game, and he has even more platforms to exploit his music, which is good for him, KKR and BMG,” he continued.
So far legendary musicians and rights holders like Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Stevie Nicks have sold or are in the process of selling their life’s work for eye-popping sums of money: The James Brown Estate reportedly walked away with $90 million from Primary Wave after a fifteen year contentious internal battle.
Primary Wave Music is a New York company that specializes in marketing estates and song catalogues, bought the assets of the Brown estate, including music rights, real estate and the control over Brown’s name and likeness. They also own a percentage of Whitney Houston and Bob Marley’s catalogues.
In Hip Hop rapper Lil Wayne cashed out his entire Young Money catalogue including Drake and Nicki Minaj’s for $100 million to Universal Music Group.
Future recently sold his publishing in a deal said to be worth $65 million to Influence Media Partners. The sale includes 612 titles from 2004 to 2020.
Universal Music Group also dropped a cool $300 Million in the same period to purchase the entire songwriting catalog of Bob Dillon in one of the biggest acquisitions ever of a single act’s publishing rights, per New York Times.
BBC reported that Tina Turner sold the rights to her music catalogue for $50 million dollars, including hits like The Best and Nutbush City Limits, to music publishing company BMG. Billboard Magazine reported in January that Columbian Superstar Shakira had sold 100% of her music publishing rights to the Merck Mercuriadis owned Hipgnosis Songs Fund.
Merck Mercuriadis, the front man for Hipgnosis recently did a share buy back after the stock for Hipgnosis to a 30% dip and he told World Music Views that he would buy reggae music catalogs if they were available.
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