BOB DYLAN SELLS HIS SONG CATALOG TO UNIVERSAL

To many music lovers, Bob Dylan’s songbook is priceless. Now he’s put a price on it.

The singer-songwriter has sold publishing rights to his catalog of more than 600 songs, one of the greatest treasures in popular music, to the Universal Music Publishing Group, it was announced on Monday.

His collection includes modern standards like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Like a Rolling Stone” through to this year’s 17-minute opus on the John F. Kennedy assassination, “Murder Most Foul.” The body of work may only be matched for its breadth and inf luence by The Beatles, whose songs were reacquired by Paul McCartney in 2017.

The price was not disclosed, but industry experts have suggested the sale is in the range of $300 million to a half-billion dollars.

The sale gives Universal the right, in perpetuity, to lease use of Dylan’s compositions to advertisers and movie, television or video game producers, or anyone who thinks his words and melodies could enhance their product.

Dylan’s team cautioned anyone against thinking this is a sign that the 79-year-old music legend is checking out. Rather, it seems like he’s taking advantage of a favorable business climate to find a comfortable home for his life’s work.

Despite the sale, Dylan does not lose complete control over his work. The Universal deal does not include rights to Dylan’s own recordings of his material, so if Universal is approached to use Dylan’s recording of “Lay Lady Lay,” for example, that would have to be cleared by the artist.