The first big catalog deal of the young year is official: The Warner Music Group is taking over the authoring rights from David Bowie.

The sale includes the 26 studio albums by the artist, who died in 2016, the album "Toy", released posthumously in 2021, and the works of the band Tin Machine, as well as singles and publications with other projects, announced the third largest music company in the world on Monday.

The rights to songs like “Space Oddity,” “Life on Mars ?,” “Heroes” or “Lazarus” are now owned by Warner's publishing division, Warner Chappell.

Their boss, Guy Moot, said the entire team at Warner Chappell is "immensely proud that the David Bowie estate administrators have chosen us to maintain one of the most groundbreaking, influential and enduring catalogs in music history."

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

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The Financial Times had already reported at the end of October 2021 that the British star's heirs were negotiating a sale of the author's catalog.

At that time there was talk of a possible price of around $ 200 million.

As usual, financial details were not disclosed in connection with the financial statements that have now been reached.

According to the industry magazine Variety, the price is now more than $ 250 million. 

Warner as a logical partner 

A lot of money has been paid for a proportion of proven catalogs for some time. Most of the time, artists sell copyrights or parts of them. For example, in December 2020 Bob Dylan sold his rights to texts and compositions to more than 600 works to the publishing division of Universal Music. In mid-December, Bruce Springsteen had probably the largest sale of a single artist to date by selling his author's rights and the rights to his recordings to Sony Music. In total, Springsteen is said to have received more than $ 500 million for the package. The field is also increasingly attracting financial investors such as KKR, Blackstone or Apollo Global Management, who also expect stable long-term income from the exploitation of the rights. 

Despite the large and financially strong competition, Warner Music was always the favorite when it came to winning Bowie's author catalog.

Because in September last year, the artist's heirs had already signed a license agreement for the marketing of the recordings with Warner.

With the purchase of the author's catalog, Warner is from now on the point of contact and beneficiary of any use of Bowie's songs - be it in the form of cover songs or the use of original recordings, for example in series. 

The music company, which has been listed on the stock exchange again since June 2020, had recently raised $ 535 million for acquisitions through new debt.

Part of it has probably already been used for the takeover of the 300 Entertainment label, for which Warner paid around $ 400 million.