Which artist has sold their back catalogue for the most?
It’s not romantic, and it certainly isn’t rock ‘n’ roll, but any artist worth their salt knew they had to learn the business as much as pen a good tune in the big, bad music biz.
Up until the 1970s, some of the biggest names in rock and pop had been fleeced, stiffed, and downright shafted through dodgy contracts. The Rolling Stones learned the hard way. For decades, many of their 1960s hits were struck in the dubious contracts of business manager Allen Klein’s ABKCO company, enjoying significant publishing ownership and squirrelling away funds on ‘intermediary’ companies.
In Badfinger’s case, a dodgy managemt come employer agreement meant all their hit revenue was funnelled into the pockets of their manager at Badfinger’s expense, thought to have led to the suicide of both members Pete Ham and Tom Evans.
From The Beatles, Van Morrison, The Small Faces, and John Fogerty, many were stung by the scourge of a predatory business. It took the artist to have to wise up, The Rolling Stones breaking ground in 1971 when they struck a far more equitable label relationship with Atlantic, triggering their lips logo branding and earning the unprecedented unprecedented $1millin guaranteed advance and 10% royalty rate on every record sold.
From then on, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Stevie Wonder would spark the ‘blockbuster’ deals that broke records across the ensuing years.
Jump to the 2020s, and the lucrative deals now lean on big-name artists flogging their back catalogue. There’s a slew of motives for such songbook grabs. In an age of dismal streaming revenues and a less financially certain consumption of their material, rock and pop’s A-listers may be happy to take the mammoth cheque from a company eager to make good use of their music rights and property for the Netflix shows hungry for a retro soundtrack, or to feed the explosion of the Hollywood biopic dominating the box office in recent years.
Bruce Springsteen had been signed to Columbia Records since day one back in 1972, and has proven to be their most lucrative unit shifter, to this day, reported to add around $15million to the label every year. Keen to retain its asset, the parent Sony company offered Springsteen a whopping $500m for publishing rights and masters. In second place for record-breaking back catalogue deals came the Michael Jackson estate. In 2024, Sony Music forked out $600m for a 50% acquisition of the ‘King of Pop’s catalogue, including the masters to Thriller and Bad.
So, who sold their back catalogue for the most?
They’re a rock behemoth that just doesn’t die. In the same year as the Jackson deal, Sony Music Publishing handed the three surviving Queen members, plus the Freddie Mercury estate, an ungodly $1.27billion for not just masters and publishing rights, but its brand name and image, the one exception being the revenues generated from Queen’s live shows with Adam Lambert.
The Sony-Queen deal stands as the largest sum ever paid for an artist’s body of work, minus touring revenue, thought to have been eyed up after the Queen songbook suddenly exploded in worth after the 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody feature triggered a massive spike in streaming the classic rock stalwart’s streaming figures.
