Not P but Bob : Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster Deal - The New York Times

[Allan Balliett]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/music/bob-dylan-sells-publishing.html?referringSource=articleShare

Bob Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster DealUniversal Music
purchased his entire songwriting catalog of more than 600 songs in what may
be the biggest acquisition ever of a single act’s publishing rights.
Dec. 7, 2020Updated 7:43 a.m. ET
[image: Universal Music purchased Bob Dylan’s songwriting catalog,
including classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are
A-Changin’” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”]
Universal Music purchased Bob Dylan’s songwriting catalog, including
classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and
“Like a Rolling Stone.”Chris Pizzello/Associated Press

Bob Dylan’s memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” opens in 1962 with the signing
of his first music publishing deal — a contract for the copyrights of the
budding songwriter’s work. The terms of that agreement, brokered by Lou
Levy of Leeds Music Publishing, met young Dylan’s approval.

“Lou had advanced me a hundred dollars against future royalties to sign the
paper,” he wrote, “and that was fine with me.”

Fifty-eight years, more than 600 songs and one Nobel Prize
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize.html>
later, the cultural and economic value of Dylan’s songwriting corpus have
both grown exponentially.

On Monday, the Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had
signed a landmark deal to purchase Dylan’s entire songwriting catalog —
including world-changing classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times
They Are A-Changin’” and “Like a Rolling Stone” — in what may be the
biggest acquisition ever of the music publishing rights of a single act.

The deal, which covers Dylan’s entire career, from his earliest songs to
the tunes on his latest album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/arts/music/bob-dylan-rough-and-rowdy-ways-review.html>
was struck directly with Dylan, 79, who has long controlled the majority of
his own songwriting copyrights.

The price was not disclosed, but is estimated at more than $300 million.

“It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all
great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest
practitioners of that art,” Lucian Grainge, the chief executive of the
Universal Music Group, said in a statement announcing the deal.

Jody Gerson, the chief executive of Universal’s publishing division, added,
“To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all
time — whose cultural importance can’t be overstated — is both a privilege
and a responsibility.”

Dylan had no comment, a spokesman said.

The deal is the latest and most high-profile in this year’s buzzing market
for music catalogs, as artists both young and old have sold their songs,
while publishers and investors have raised billions of dollars from both
public and private sources to close those deals.

Last week, Stevie Nicks
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/stevie-nicks-sells-stake-in-songwriting-catalog-11607095635>
sold a majority stake in her songwriting catalog for an estimated $80
million to Primary Wave Music, an independent publisher and marketing
company. Hipgnosis Songs Fund, a British company that has made a rapid run
in the market in just two and a half years, recently disclosed that it had
spent about $670 million from March to September acquiring rights in more
than 44,000 songs by Blondie, Rick James, Barry Manilow, Chrissie Hynde of
the Pretenders and others.

Dylan’s catalog, however, is one of the music world’s ultimate jewels — a
trove of songs that reshaped folk, rock and pop and inspired countless
artists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-literature.html>
in 2016 “for having created new poetic expressions within the great
American song tradition.”

Dylan is also the kind of writer whose work music publishers especially
salivate over. Not only has his work stood the test of time, but most of
his songs were written by Dylan alone and have been frequently covered by
other artists — with each use generating royalties. According to Universal,
Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times.

Music publishing is the side of the business that deals in the copyrights
for songwriting and composition — the lyrics and melodies of songs, in
their most fundamental form — which are distinct from those for a
recording. Publishers and writers collect royalties and licensing fees any
time their work is sold, streamed, broadcast on the radio or used in a
movie or TV commercial. (The recent sale
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/arts/music/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-masters.html>
of Taylor Swift’s first six albums covered only that material’s recording
rights. Swift signed a separate publishing deal with Universal in February
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/arts/music/taylor-swift-universal-publishing-deal.html>
.)

Streaming has helped lift the entire music market — publishers in the
United States collected $3.7 billion in 2019, according to the National
Music Publishers’ Association — which has drawn new investors attracted to
the steady and growing income generated by music rights.

Dylan’s deal includes 100 percent of his rights for all the songs of his
catalog, including both the income he receives as a songwriter and his
control of each song’s copyright. In exchange for its payment to Dylan,
Universal, a division of the French media conglomerate Vivendi, will
collect all future income from the songs.

Music publishing has been a little-known cornerstone of much of Dylan’s
career. The songs he recorded with the Band in 1967, for example, which
were widely bootlegged at the time and later collected in Dylan’s 1975
album “The Basement Tapes,” were intended as demos to be shopped to other
recording artists. And much of Dylan’s business empire is operated through
the Bob Dylan Music Company, a small office in New York that administers
his publishing rights in the United States. (Elsewhere around the world,
his catalog has been administered by Sony/ATV.)

The deal includes more than 600 songs spread across a number of publishing
companies that Dylan has had over the years. With the exception of his
original Leeds Music deal — which included seven songs, among them “Song
for Woody” and “Talkin’ New York” — Dylan eventually took full control of
all his copyrights from those catalogs; Leeds was sold in 1964
<https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/26/archives/mca-buys-leeds-music-publisher-entertainment-concern-gets-assets.html>
to MCA, which became Universal.

The new deal with Universal does not include any songs Dylan writes in the
future, leaving open the possibility that he could choose to work with
another publisher for that material.

The Universal deal also includes Dylan’s shares in a number of songs he has
written with other songwriters, although of the more than 600 titles
included in the deal, there is only one in which Dylan is not a writer, but
still owns the copyright: Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight,”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWu-f7HFFJE> as recorded by the Band.

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