It’s no secret that the value of music rights has increased over time. But recently there has been a huge spike in the value of major artists’ music catalogs. To put it in perspective, when John Lennon and Paul McCartney sold their shares of the Beatles’ music rights back in 1969, they sold their shares for 3.5 million dollars, which is the equivalent of 67$ million dollars today.
Sounds like a lot of money right? Well fast-forward to November 2020 and the Killers have sold their rights for 100 million dollars, and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac sells around 80% of her catalog for the same amount. Now the 3.5 million dollar payout the Beatles got back in 1969 does not sound as good. The sudden increase in the value of music rights is partially due to investment companies seeing the catalogs as smart investments and therefore are willing to pay the artists these large amounts of money. The rights to Taylor Swift’s first 6 albums were sold for around 300 million dollars while Bob Dylan turned down an offer for the rights to his catalog rumored to be around 400 million dollars. Another factor could be the fact that artists were not able to tour in 2020 due to the pandemic, which is their primary source of income. But no matter what the reason is, a lot of artists are jumping to sell their music catalogs at these high values.