Queen ready to sell their music catalogue for £1 billion
Queen–Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon, and the estate of Freddie Mercury, have apparently reached a deal to sell almost everything Queen to Sony Music Entertainment. The transaction, which has been in negotiations for months, is worth £1 billion or roughly $1.7 billion Canadian dollars.
Sale encompasses a lot: The rights to all the songs; image and likeness; logos; merch; music videos, and other intellectual property. The only thing not covered is any revenue derived from live performances of the group’s current iteration which features original members Brian May and Roger Taylor.
Queen has sold 300 million records in their lifetime and “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the most-streamed rock song of all time. There’s a lot of life left in this brand.
The selling price makes this the biggest deal in the history of music catalogue and IP acquisitions, dwarfing the US$600 million Sony paid for half of Michael Jackson’s catalogue and more than double the US$500 Bruce Springsteen got for his work.
I’ll have more analysis of the deal in the days ahead.
