The rush for timeless repertoires of music giants continues: the American group Warner Music announced, Monday, January 3, that it had bought the rights to all of David Bowie’s work, a new act of a strong trend driven by streaming and the Covid.
The agreement sealed between the heirs of Bowie and Warner Music, for an amount, not officially confirmed, of more than 250 million dollars (more than 220 million euros) according to the site Variety, comes in addition to other transactions that have marked the music industry for months.
In mid-December, it was Bruce Springsteen who sold the rights to his entire repertoire to Sony for more than $ 550 million. A few months earlier, Tina Turner was doing the same with BMG.
For its part, Warner Chappell Music (WMC) has acquired the property of an exceptional repertoire: from the very first David Bowie in 1967, to the posthumous opus Toy, released in November 2021, the deal includes twenty-seven albums and hundreds of songs, including the legendary Space Oddity, Heroes Where Let’s dance.
“These are not only extraordinary songs, but milestones that forever changed the course of modern music”, welcomed the boss of WCM, Guy Moot, in a statement.
Precursor of glamrock, creator of the universe as much as a musician, with his characters like Major Tom or Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie remains one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.e century. Died in January 2016, the Briton had left behind a unique imprint and a discography rich in hits, such as Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Where Rebel rebel.
“Very lucrative assets”
With this agreement, Warner, one of the three big world “majors” with Sony and Universal, is supposed to receive rights for each broadcast or use of a Bowie track on a streaming platform, in a film or in an advertisement.
After a difficult phase during the 2000s, the music industry took off again with the streaming revolution, a major source of income for catalog owners. Once the preserve of a few major record labels, the sector is now attracting investment funds like Hipgnosis.
“Songs of extraordinary success and with cultural impact produce reliable and long-term income streams and are therefore very lucrative assets”, wrote, in a recent report from the company, one of its founders, Merck Mercuriadis, former manager of Elton John. Hipgnosis claims to own 146 catalogs – including those of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and part of Neil Young’s work acquired in 2021 – or more than 65,000 songs, for a value it estimates at more than $ 2.55 billion. . Hipgnosis also sees revenue prospects on newer platforms like TikTok or Roblox.
By the end of 2020, Universal had acquired the entire Bob Dylan catalog, for an estimated amount of $ 300 million.
As for artists, especially the older ones, there is a tax interest, reminds Agence France-Presse (AFP) radio host and music analyst Alan Cross, because the tax on a lump sum sale will be lower than on a regular income in the United States.