MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

The news that David Bowie’s heirs have sold the rights to his music for something in the region of $250 million comes as no surprise to me. His catalogue is just the latest in a long line of work by ‘heritage’ acts, some dead, some alive, whose music has been snapped up by large corporations in the hope they’ll get their money back many times over through streaming, dwindling sales of CDs, mechanical copyright earnings, song publishing revenues and exploitation in movies, TV and advertising usage.

        Some people ask why. My guess is that David’s widow Imam, now in her sixties, their daughter Lexi, and David’s son Duncan Jones, simply don’t want to be bothered with the effort and expense involved in exercising control over the music that their husband and father left behind. Far better to bank (and enjoy) the money than to spend years fretting over how best to administer and make use of the legacy themselves. This would require difficult decisions, loads of meetings, reams of paperwork, expensive lawyers and constant policing, a heap of headaches best left in the hands of persons better qualified for this kind of work than themselves. Banking a pirate’s treasure certainly looks like the better option to me. 

        I find it less surprising that Bowie’s heirs have taken this decision than the similar deals that have been made by artists still living. Bruce Springsteen remains creative into his seventies, one of few big acts of his generation to maintain a steady output of quality new material, so the reason for his decision to sell, along with, say, Neil Young, another perennial achiever – who sold 50% of his catalogue about a year ago – is less clear. It’s not as if Bruce needs the money, topping the list with a reputed $500 million in his case, and I’ve long maintained the view, perhaps naively, that he was never in it for the money in the first place. Maybe he just wants to make sure that none of his descendants wind up like father Doug, bitter and twisted after years in that dead-end factory job, his anger and frustration the source of so many of his son’s songs.

        In fact, the list of acts who’ve sold their catalogues is virtually endless. Anyone interested can visit a website* which lists 54 acts, ranging from Bob Dylan to Bing Crosby, most with the price attached, and a further thirty-odd who’ve sold portions of their catalogues for undisclosed sums. I don’t think it’s a complete list either, as there’s no sign of Pete Townshend on it, nor of Dusty Springfield who, unless I’m mistaken, was one of the first artists to enter into this kind of deal, thus ensuring she could spend her final years without a care in the world at a very pleasant cottage near Henley. 

        It’s perhaps more pertinent to note who hasn’t sold their work, and there are some big names holding out, all of them British, which suggests that American acts are more inclined to bank the cash than the Brits. Paul McCartney isn’t on the list, and neither are The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Davies, Elton John or Rod Stewart. U2 and R.E.M. are also absent. It might be the case that some act’s catalogues aren’t theirs to sell, insofar as somewhere along the line they lost control of their work or, like Elvis – see below – were swindled out of it by some nefarious wheeler-dealer. Asked recently about the issue, Elton’s manager David Furnish said it was “unthinkable” for his client and partner to sell his songs, adding: “I can’t think of anything more agonising, and neither can Elton, than sitting and watching someone else take his and Bernie [Taupin’s] songs and do what they want with them.”

        I know, or I think I know, how that might feel. David would certainly wince if an enterprising confectionary brand launched a chocolate bar called Heroes and promoted it with David’s song of the same name, or a toy company produced an astronaut doll they called The Starman. 

        All of this ties in quite neatly into a book I’m reading right now called Leaving The Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates by Eamonn Forde, a music biz expert whose last book The Final Days of EMI: The Selling Of The Pig I edited while at Omnibus Press. Leaving The Building takes as its starting point the remarkable rehabilitation of Elvis Presley’s estate which, at the time of his death in 1977, was almost threadbare, at least by the standards you would expect of a singer who’d sold nigh on a billion records in his lifetime.  

        Though it’s likely he didn’t realise what was going on, Elvis was quite probably the first artist to enter into a deal along the lines of the one that David Bowie’s heirs have just concluded. In 1972, with sales of Elvis’ records in terminal decline, Col Tom Parker, his manager, reached an agreement with RCA Records that he and Elvis would relinquish all future royalties on Elvis’ back catalogue sales in exchange for $5 million in cash that was split 50/50 between them. Naturally Elvis paid tax on his share – leaving him with just over $1 million for his life’s work, a paltry sum in view of its significance and heritage. From RCA’s point of view, however, this deal was as sweet as they come – they now owned Elvis’ back catalogue outright – and for Parker the deal provided a handsome nest egg for his eventual retirement. 

        Happily, Priscilla Presley, acting on behalf of their daughter Lisa Marie, rescued the estate – and turned around that awful deal with RCA – but that didn’t stop Lisa from selling out eventually anyway.

        I called this post Money, Money, Money, after the song by Abba, another act whose catalogue is doubtless worth a nine-figure sum. So I’ll close by mentioning that Voyage became the fastest-selling album of 2021, which can’t have done their stock price any harm at all. When Björn and Benny decide the time is right, will Abba’s catalogue top Bruce’s $500 mil? My money says it will. 

*https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/heres-a-running-list-of-artists-who-have-sold-some-or-all-of-their-song-catalogues-to-a-new-breed-of-company/