By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
The source added that the sale could surpass $1 billion and that the deal is “expected to close within one month,” which would indicate a completion date for the deal before the end of June.
However, the Disney Music Group has raised doubts about the story, telling CNN that it has no plans to sell the catalog.
If a deal is underway, however, it is considered feasible that Queen’s catalog could in fact sell for a billion dollars or more, due to the meteoric rise in value of music catalogs in general, a trend that began in 2016. As well, the popularity of Queen soared in 2018 and beyond thanks to the hit film Bohemian Rhapsody that came out that year to near universal acclaim.
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The Springsteen deal may be the largest yet, but it’s also in line with a trend that started in the late 2010s. Until 2016 investment in music catalogs never cracked the half-billion-dollar mark, but in 2016 the sales of these musical treasure chests began to take off.
In that year sales of music catalogs reached roughly $900 million compared to only $200 million in 2015. The number surpassed $1.2 billion in 2017, reached $2.5 billion in 2018, and soared past the $4 billion mark in 2019. In the latest report by Midia Research, the sales of publicly stated music catalog acquisitions hit $5.29 billion, or 26 times more than music catalogs earned in 2015.
As well, Midia’s research seems to indicate the market is primarily looking for older catalogs, which has meant a big payday for rock and pop stars from 1970s and 1980s in particular. Rock music alone accounted for 35% of catalog deals in 2021, while Hip Hop raked in only 3%, despite that genre’s greater popularity on streaming services.
Supporting that conclusion, Midia’s data showed that of the 100 “classic” acts that topped the Billboard charts between 1970 and 1999, nearly a third have already sold all or a portion of their catalogs.
The big players in this market were initially made up of ‘musical royalty funds’ like Hipgnosis, Primary Wave, Royalty Exchange, BMG Music Rights, Kobalt, Eldridge Industries and Round Hill. More recently traditional labels like Universal have entered the game, as they were the ones who purchased the Bob Dylan catalog for $300 million in the first deal that really hit the public consciousness.. Sony is now also a huge player, having completed some of the most lucrative deals in the industry.