For almost 100 million euros Rod Stewart sells his song rights for a fortune
February 16, 2024, 9:00 a.m. Listen to article
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Rod Stewart monetizes the rights to his songs: He is said to receive almost 100 million euros for selling them to a rights exploitation company. With this step, the British musician follows many other prominent artists.
With the British singer Rod Stewart, another artist has sold the rights to his hits for a fortune. As the “Wall Street Journal” reported, Irving Azoff’s rights management company Iconic Artists Group acquired rights to Stewart’s music recordings, his song catalog and some rights to the name Rod Stewart for almost 100 million dollars (93 million euros). Stewart has had many hits over the past few decades such as “Maggie May”, “Sailing” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”.
Trading in music rights has developed into a huge market in recent years. Important artists such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young received huge sums of money for their song rights. But it’s not just older artists who take advantage of this opportunity to make a lot of money. Last year, Justin Bieber, now 29, sold his song rights to the music investment fund Hipgnosis Songs Capital. Almost 184 million euros are said to have gone towards over 290 songs by the Canadian singer.
Most recently, almost a week ago, reports about the acquisition of around half of Michael Jackson’s recordings and song rights by the entertainment group Sony caused a stir. The New York Times reported, citing informed sources, that the value of Jackson’s entire work was $1.2 billion or more. The website “Billboard” concluded that Sony paid at least $600 for the portion of the “King of Pop’s” works.
Investors value song rights as a worthwhile long-term investment in the age of music streaming. The rights holders receive royalties when the songs are played on the radio or on streaming platforms, from record sales and when the music is used for advertising and films.