In the series of catalog deals, musicians usually sell rights to their work to music companies, financial investors or companies financed by such.

John Fogerty, on the other hand, has now reacquired the majority of his author rights to the songs of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) from Concord Music.

The releases of the group, which dissolved in 1972, include "Have You Ever Seen Rain", "Bad Moon Rising" and "Proud Mary".

Both sides announced the deal on Thursday.

As usual with catalog sales, no financial details were given.

The industry magazine Billboard first reported on the sale.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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Fogerty's case is special because the agreement was preceded by a decades-long struggle for the rights - not with Concord, but with the film producer Saul Zaentz, who died in early January 2014.

He once signed the now 77-year-old musician to his Fantasy Records label with an affiliated publishing division and subsequently always refused to relinquish the rights.

Concord, in turn, took over the label and publisher's catalog in 2004.

The company holds the rights to the CCR recordings and will continue to manage Fogerty's portion of the author's rights to the works.

The band has almost 22 million monthly listeners on music streaming market leader Spotify.

She may also be known to many through the film "The Big Lebowski" and the character played by Jeff Bridges with a pronounced soft spot for CCR.

According to Fogerty's wife and manager Julie, parts of the author's rights to the CCR songs would probably have gradually reverted to author Fogerty from 2026.

But with the agreement that has now been reached, in addition to the US rights, the author's rights valid around the world could also be recovered.

The duo had hired the busy artist manager Irving Azoff for the venture.

Azoff buys catalogs himself with his Iconic Artists Group.

The group holds rights packages from the Beach Boys and David Crosby, among others.

dr

Dre is said to be about to sell the rights

Meanwhile, the next big sale of an artist seems to be just around the corner.

As Billboard reports, rapper and producer Dr.

Dre is about to sell two separate rights packages to the world's largest music company Universal Music and the investment company Shamrock Capital.

We're talking about a total price of around 200 million dollars.

Shamrock Capital is also already familiar with music rights.

In November 2020, the company took over the rights to superstar Taylor Swift's old recordings.

This case is also preceded by a bitter dispute – between Swift and Scooter Braun, who manages Justin Bieber, for example.

Braun's Ithaca Holdings took over Swift's old label Big Machine Records in June 2019 and with it the rights to the recordings.

In protest, Swift announced at the time that she would re-record her old albums as soon as her contract allowed her to diminish the value of the old recordings when her fans streamed the new ones as a priority.

She has now started doing that.

She had also previously stated that she would reject requests for the use of her old songs in films, video games or advertising in series.

As the author or co-author, she must agree to this, as does the owner of the rights to the recordings.