The world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, takes over the rights to the recordings as well as to the lyrics and compositions from Neil Diamond.

As the company announced on Monday, the agreement includes not only the rights to songs (and Diamond's recordings of those) like "Sweet Caroline," "Red Red Wine," or "Solitary Man," but also to 110 unreleased tracks, one unreleased album and video footage.

Potential new plants are also covered by the agreement.

Financial details were - as is the rule with such sales - not made public.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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The sale of the 81-year-old American, who announced in 2018 that he had Parkinson's disease, was preceded by numerous catalog deals from other musicians.

Just over two weeks ago, Sting sold the lyrics and composition rights to his work to Universal Music for a reported $300 million after the company secured the author rights from Bob Dylan in December 2020.

There was talk of up to 400 million dollars.

In the summer of 2021, Dylan also sold the rights to his recordings to Sony Music.

Blackrock and Warner invest together

The price level is likely to have tended to rise since Dylan's first sale, since financial investors such as KKR (who maintain a partnership with the Bertelsmann music division BMG), Blackstone, Pimco or Apollo Global Management are increasingly interested in coveted catalogs and constant income interested in the evaluation of rights.

At the end of last week, a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Blackrock had invested in a $750 million rights acquisition fund with Warner Music, number three in the music industry.

Blackrock had previously acted in this area as a financier to US publisher and very active rights buyer Primary Wave.

Rights packages and the associated royalties had also been sold in recent months by stars such as Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Shakira, Tina Turner, Paul Simon and the bands Imagine Dragons and The Killers.

Bruce Springsteen's deal with Sony Music is considered the largest sale to date by a single artist.

Like Neil Diamond now, the "boss" sold the rights to his recordings as well as those to the underlying lyrics and compositions.

He is said to have received a total of up to 550 million dollars for this, with Sony's publishing division having teamed up with the US holding company Eldridge Industries in the case of author rights.

In the meantime, rights to recordings and individual claims to royalties, some from producers, are also increasingly being sold.

Barry Massarsky, whose team is responsible for evaluating the majority of catalog sales, recently put it this way to the FAZ: “Everything that has to do with music is of interest to buyers today.

Be it the respective royalties of producers, labels, artists or just the synch rights, author's share, publisher's share - if you want to sell something, you know exactly where to knock."

However, the majority of the big deals in particular still include author rights.

The sale of Diamonds once again underlines their special appeal.

It is no coincidence that Universal emphasizes in the announcement how often a "Solitary Man" or "Sweet Caroline" has been covered or their compositions used.

Because with the purchase that has now been announced, Universal always has a share in the income generated from this, as well as in that from the marketing of Diamond's original recordings.