Changing commercial music 600 songs at a time
There have only ever been two Nobel prizes awarded to lyricists and musicians, and only one of those has been awarded within the last hundred years. In 2016, Bob Dylan was granted the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Though controversial at the time, no one can deny Dylan’s unparalleled influence on virtually all the top music genres of the last 60 years.
In one of the most impressive music deals ever made to date, Bob Dylan sold his entire cache of music to Universal Records on Dec. 7, 2020 — but he’s not the first to do this. Numerous others including the Beatles (whose catalog was purchased by Michael Jackson in late 1985), Stevie Nicks, Imagine Dragons, Tom DeLonge (Blink-182), Jack Antonoff (Bleachers) and Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi) have sold their catalogs to other publishers.
Dylan has had a particularly aggressive interest in putting his musical repertoire into the commercial sphere. When he first allowed an accounting firm to use “The Times They Are a-Changin” in the mid-90s, mass criticism erupted from fans and artistic contemporaries alike. Scathing headlines populated some of the top news sources in the country with Time magazine publishing “Just in Case You Hadn’t Heard — the ‘60s Are Over”. That hardly deterred Dylan, though, who went on to pursue numerous other commercial opportunities with other labels and companies.
The royalty ownership to Dylan’s impressive collection of over 600 songs is rumoured to have been priced around $300 million, though the exact six-figure deal has not been revealed. A seemingly hefty price to pay, except Universal will exclusively now receive profits from any commercial usage — from covers, to streams, to use in other media. This basically means we will probably be hearing more of Bob Dylan in TV shows, movies, commercials, etc. Even though Dylan has been relatively liberal in his commercial partnerships, he now has relinquished his “veto power” to prevent his work from being used in ways he doesn’t like.
Furthermore, the ownership deal does not include rights to the royalties for anything Dylan might release in the future. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, Dylan’s musical releases will essentially remain untouched. “This deal does not cover the master rights to Dylan’s recordings — that is, the rights and royalties associated with any of the albums and songs he’s released as a performer … This also means that there should be no change to future installments of Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg Series of unreleased vault recordings, which continue to be controlled by Dylan, his management, and his record company.”
It is likely more artists will continue moving in a similar direction in regards to music publishing (except, apparently, Taylor Swift), instead electing to favor maintaining ownership of their recording rights.
Sage Souza is a junior studying political science and Spanish. In her free time, she enjoys long walks on the beach, making too many playlists on Spotify, and retweeting Karl Marx fancams.
@sageksouza