The company has redeemed the rights of the American singer for more than $ 250 million, according to the site “Variety”, an unconfirmed amount officially.
Le Monde with AFP.
The rush to the timeless directories of continuous music giants: the American group Warner Music announced, Monday, January 3, have redeemed the rights linked to all the work of David Bowie, a new act of a heavy trend by streaming and covid.
The sealed agreement between the heirs of Bowie and Warner Music, for an amount, not officially confirmed by more than $ 250 million (more than 220 million euros) according to the site Variety In addition to other transactions that have marked the music industry for months.
In mid-December, Bruce Springsteen was selling rights related to all his repertoire for more than $ 550 million. A few months earlier, Tina Turner was the same with BMG.
For his part, Warner Chappell Music (WMC) has put his hand on the property of an exceptional directory: at all first David Bowie in 1967, at the opus posthumous Toy, released in November 2021, the agreement includes Twenty-seven albums and hundreds of songs, including legendary Space Oddy, Heroes or Let’s Dance.
“These are not just extraordinary songs, but milestones that have changed the course of modern music forever,” welcomed the boss of WCM, Guy Moot, in a statement.
Glamrock’s precursor, creator of universe as much as musician, with his characters like Major Tom or Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie remains one of the most influential musicians of the XX e century. Death in January 2016, the British had left behind a unique footprint and a tube-rich discography, like Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, or Rebel Rebel.
“Very lucrative assets”
With this agreement, Warner, one of the world’s three major “majors” with Sony and Universal, is supposed to touch rights at each broadcast or use of a piece of bowie on a streaming platform, in a movie or Advertising.
After a difficult phase during the 2000s, the music industry has resumed colors with the streaming revolution, major source of revenue for catalog holders. Formerly a hunting of some large disk houses, the sector now attracts investment funds like hipgnosis.
“Songs to the extraordinary success and with a cultural impact produce reliable and long-term income flows and are therefore very lucrative assets,” written, in a recent report of the company, one of its founders, Merck Mercuriadis, an old manager of Elton John. Hipgnosis claim to hold 146 catalogs – including those of the Red Hot Chile Peppers and part of Neil Young’s work acquired in 2021 – more than 65,000 songs, for a value that it estimates at more than $ 2.55 billion. . Hipgnosis also sees income prospects on larger platforms like Tiktok or Roblox.
End 2020, Universal acquired the entire Bob Dylan catalog for an estimated $ 300 million.
On the artists’ side, especially older, there is a fiscal interest, reminds the France-Presse agency (AFP) the radio facilitator and musical analyst Alan Cross, because the taxation on a flat-rate sale will be lower than on a regular income in the United States.