Queen
Band sells music catalogue to Sony for one billion euros
Queen is likely to transfer its music rights to Sony Music.
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The whole world knows hits like “We Will Rock You” by Queen. Now the band is planning to sell the rights to their music in full.
Queen is heading straight for another world record. As “Variety” reports, citing the music industry insider medium “Hits Daily Double” and two other informants, the band will sell all of its music rights to Sony Music. The label is apparently paying one billion pounds (about 1.2 billion euros) for the British rock band’s music catalog, which includes global hits such as “We Are The Champions” and “We Will Rock You”.
The billion-dollar deal includes recordings, publishing rights and even merchandising for the band. Only the income from live performances that Queen members Brian May (76) and Roger Taylor (74) still do today as Queen + Adam Lambert is to be excluded. The same applies to royalties from recordings from North America that were sold to Disney in the 2000s and will remain there.
Sale has long been discussed
According to the industry magazine, it had been clear for some time that the remaining Queen members would offer their music catalogue for sale. In addition to Sony Music, another bidder was said to have been involved until the end, but the bid withdrew at 900 million pounds.
Sony Music has made some major investments in music rights in recent months: “Billboard” reportedthat the label paid 600 million dollars in February for half of the catalog rights of Michael Jackson (1958-2009), and 500 million for those of Bruce Springsteen (74). The purchase of the Queen rights, however, represents an unprecedented sum.
Queen is one of the most successful bands of all time
Freddie Mercury (1946-1991), Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon (72) released their first album as Queen in 1973. Two years later, with the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the group became a global phenomenon and developed into one of the most successful bands of all time. The band constellation remained unchanged for two decades until Mercury’s tragic death in 1991.
Since then, the band’s legacy has not only continued unbroken, but has even grown – most recently thanks to the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody”. To date, the band has sold 315 million records worldwide. According to the balance sheet of the band’s company “Queen Productions Ltd.”, for example, sales and streams of all Queen songs in the 2021 financial year brought in around £40 million in royalties.