AS DYLAN SELLS HIS PUBLISHING, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE CANON?
“You may see Blowin’ In The Wind used for all sorts of products…”
SIMON PLATZ
BOB DYLAN fans are accustomed to surprises but rarely on the scale of his decision to sell his entire catalogue of over 600 songs to Universal Music Publishing Group last month. UMPG called the deal, estimated to be worth over $300 million (£225m), “one of the most important of all time”. (Sony/ATV will continue to administer Dylan’s international rights beyond the US until its deal expires.) One reaction came from David Crosby, who tweeted: “I am selling mine also …I can’t work …and streaming stole my record money …it’s my only option.”
Why now for Dylan? He may have considerable tax incentives, and he may never get a better price. “Private equity funds have deemed publishing to be sexy,” says Simon Platz, MD of the independent publishers Bucks Music Group. “The money is looking good.”
Last year saw an unprecedented boom in the acquisition of song catalogues, with funds paying up to 20 times the value of a publisher’s net annual royalties. Between March and September, Merck Mercuriadis’s Hipgnosis Songs Fund more than quadrupled its bank of songs to around 57,836, including the catalogues of Blondie, Chrissie Hynde and RZA, at a cost of $670m (£500m). In November, Stevie Nicks sold 80 per cent of her rights to Primary Wave for an estimated $80m (£60m). The market is currently red-hot for older songwriters with proven longevity, who are also the most susceptible to trading future earnings for a handsome lump sum.
“I don’t think anyone would be selling their rights at the moment if they hadn’t been so catastrophically devalued,” says Crispin Hunt, chair of the Ivors Academy of Music Creators. “It’s not a willing buyer/willing seller market. It’s like selling your house because otherwise they’re going to knock it down.” As for
Universal, says Hunt, Dylan’s catalogue is a symbolic trophy. “They are doing this to stop people like Hipgnosis getting a market share. They feel threatened.”
One reason for this buying spree is that streaming data makes the value of legacy catalogues easier to identify. Another is the relative stability of song rights. Mercuriadis likes to say that songs are a safer investment than oil or gold because demand is impervious to economic and political upheavals. The year of Covid-19 bore this out, as listeners sat at home streaming while artists saw concert revenue evaporate.
Buyers of catalogues can maximise their investment by more aggressively licensing songs to ads, movies and TV shows. Dylan has licensed songs to commercials for Apple, IBM and Pepsi and even appeared in a 2004 spot for Victoria’s Secret, but he has now surrendered his power to pick and choose. “When the criteria is simply ‘how much?’ and there is no reference back to the songwriter,” says Platz, “you may see Blowin’ In The Wind used for all sorts of products.”
It seems that fans should prepare to hear beloved songs in new, and perhaps unwelcome, contexts. “Dylan’s catalogue is not only about the wonder of those amazing songs, it’s about everything they stand for,” says Hunt. “Every tune is now up for grabs as a jingle. I think it will really upset Dylan fans. It will upset me.”