Contract for the copyrights of the budding songwriter’s work – Bob Dylan’s memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” opened in 1962 with the signing of his first music release deal. The terms of that agreement, from a broker by Lou Levy of Leeds Music Publishing, met with young Dillon’s approval.
“Lou raised me a hundred dollars against future royalties to sign the paper, and he was fine with me,” he wrote.
Thirty-five years later, with more than 100 songs and a Nobel Prize, Dylan’s lyrical organization has grown in both cultural and economic value.
On Monday, Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had signed a landmark deal to buy Dylan’s full songwriting list – including world-changing classics such as “Bly in the Wind”, “The Times the R-Changin” and “Like”. A Rolling Stone ”- which may be the largest acquisition of a single act of music publishing rights.
Covering Dillon’s entire career, the deal ranged from his most recent songs to the tunes on his latest album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” with a direct accidental Dylan, who has long held most of his own songwriting copyright.
The price was not disclosed, but is estimated to be more than million 300 million.
“It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the basic key to all great music, or it’s no secret that Bob is one of the very great professionals in that art,” said Lucian Grenage, chief executive of Universal Music Group. In a statement announcing the deal.
Jody Gerson, chief executive of Universal’s publishing division, added, “It is a privilege and a responsibility to represent the work of the greatest lyricists of all time – whose cultural significance cannot be overstated.”
Dylan did not comment, a spokesman said.
The deal is the latest and highest profile in the buzz market for this year’s music catalog, as both young and old artists have sold their songs, while publishers and investors have raised billions of dollars from both public and private sources to close the deal.
Last week, Steve Nix sold a majority stake in his songwriting list to independent publisher and marketing company, Primary Wave Music, for an estimated 80 80 million. The Hypnosis Songs Fund, a British company that has grown rapidly in the market in just half a year, recently revealed that it spent $ 7070 million from March to September on more than 44,000 songs by Blood March, Rick James. Barry Manilo, Chrissy Hynde of Pretenders and others.
Dylan’s catalog, however, is one of the ultimate jewels of the music world – a collection of songs that reshaped folk, rock and pop and countless artists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for creating new poetic expressions in the great American song tradition. “
Dylan is also a kind of writer, whose work music publishers especially salivate at. His work has only been a test of time, but most of his songs have been written by Dylan alone and frequently covered by other artists – royalties are paid for each use. According to Universal, Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times.
Music publishing is one side of the business that deals in the copyright for songwriting and composition – the lyrics and melodies of the songs, in their basic form – which are different for recording. Publishers and authors charge royalties and license fees when their work is sold, circulated, broadcast on radio, or used in a movie or TV commercial. (Recent sales of Taylor Swift’s first six albums only cover the recording rights to that content. Swift signed a separate release deal with Universal in February.)
The stream has helped lift the entire music market – according to the National Music Publishers Association, publishers in the United States raised 7 7.37 billion in 2019 – attracting new investors who are attracted to the steady and growing revenue generated by music rights.
Dylan’s deal includes 100 percent of his rights to all the songs in his catalog, including both the revenue he earned as a songwriter and control over the copyright of each song. In return for its payment to Dylan, Universal, a division of the French media group Vivendi, will collect all future revenue from the songs.
Music publishing is a well-known foundation of Dylan’s career. The songs he recorded with the band in 1967, for example, were widely bootlegged at the time and later collected in Dylan’s 1975 album “The Basement Tapes”, intended to be purchased by other recording artists. And much of Dylan’s business empire is run in New York by the Bob Dylan Music Company, which manages its publishing rights in the United States. (Worldwide, its catalog is powered by Sony / ATV.)
The deal includes more than 600 songs spread across a number of publishing companies over the years. With the exception of his original Leeds Music Deal – which includes seven songs, including “Song for Woody” and “Telkin ‘New York” – Dylan eventually took full control of all his copyrights from that catalog; Leeds was sold to MCA in 1964, which became Universal.
The new deal with Universal does not include any songs written by Dylan in the future, leaving out the possibility that he might choose to work with another publisher for that content.
The Universal Deal also includes Dylan’s shares in numerous songs written with other songwriters, although of the more than 600 titles included in the deal, there is only one in which Dylan has no author, but still owns the copyright: Robertson’s as recorded by Robbie Band “Weight”.
