There have been rumors for some time, and now the deal is sealed: Sting is selling the rights to the lyrics and compositions of his works to the publisher of Universal Music.

Both parties announced this on Thursday.

The conclusion therefore includes the solo works, as well as Sting's work for the band The Police.

As is usual with such sales, no financial details were disclosed.

However, according to the industry website Music Business Worldwide, the price was around 300 million dollars.

The Wall Street Journal also refers to sources that confirm this sum.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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For Universal's publishing division - number two globally behind Sony Music Publishing - it is the second sensational deal in the wake of the recent catalog boom.

As of late December 2020, the Jody Gerson-led publishing company had already acquired the author's rights to more than 600 Bob Dylan's songs for reportedly up to $400 million.

Dylan, in turn, sold the rights to his recordings to Sony Music in the summer of 2021, with whose label Columbia Records the Nobel Prize winner for literature has been working for a long time.

Last but not least, Dylan's deal with Universal shows that this is no guarantee for a company that it will be awarded the contract.

Because outside of America, Sony's publishing arm was responsible for the administration and collecting the royalties from the marketing of the texts and compositions, and it should still be.

The rights are now held by Universal Music.

Author rights are at the heart of the run for rights to tried and tested songs that has been going on for some time.

Anyone who holds this is involved in any use of the texts and compositions - for example in films, advertising or in cover songs.

Of course, the focus on author's rights is also due to the fact that the rights to recordings, especially in the case of older artists, were often ceded to their labels for a long time in return for the investment in the performers.

Today, the evaluation times are significantly shorter.

The year began with the Bowie deal

Artists can, of course, also negotiate the rights back before they revert at the end of the contract period.

Such was the case with Springsteen, who recently sold both their recording and authoring rights to Sony Music.

In the case of author rights, the US holding company Elridge Industries was also involved in the purchase.

In total, Springsteen is said to have received up to $550 million.

The prospect of long-term stable income from the streaming boom on the one hand and the exploitation of rights on various other, especially digital channels, on the other hand, is increasingly appealing to large players from the financial world.

KKR and Pimco, for example, each have a partnership with Bertelsmann's music division BMG to jointly purchase music rights.

However, the investment company KKR (like BMG) also buys rights on its own.

In mid-October 2021, the financial investor took over a catalog with around 62,000 rights to works from Kobalt Capital.

The purchase price was around 1.1 billion dollars.

In turn, BMG has invested in the past few months in the recordings of Mötley Crüe and a package of rights from Tina Turner.

Other very active buyers are the Hipgnosis fund, which works with Blackstone, and the US publisher Primary Wave.

At the beginning of the year, Warner Music also took over the author rights from David Bowie.