New York (AFP)
The American alternative rock group The Red Hot Chili Peppers has sold its catalog of songs to one of the giants of the management of musical rights, the British Hipgnosis, for a sum estimated between 140 and 150 million dollars, according to the site of the Billboard magazine.
Contacted Tuesday by AFP, neither Hipgnosis nor the group took action.
The investment fund takes here a new piece of choice, after having already won the catalogs of Shakira or Neil Young.
Founded in 1983, the Red Hot Chili Peppers only rose to prominence in 1992 with their album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", from which the track "Under The Bridge" is taken, which remains their greatest success to this day. .
In total, the crazy band led by singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea placed seven albums in the top 10 sales in the United States, including "Californication", which has sold over 15 million copies in the world.
Since its inception and listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, Hipgnosis has raised more than 1.1 billion pounds ($ 1.5 billion).
To finance the acquisition of the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog, the investment vehicle carried out a capital increase, which enabled it to raise around $ 15 million, according to documents released by the London Stock Exchange, the LSE.
Created by the former manager of Elton John or Iron Maiden, Merck Mercuriadis, the fund has invested several hundred millions of dollars in music rights at a steady pace.
He now controls a series of popular music classics, as well as the rights to dozens of recent hits, including "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran and "Uptown Funk!"
by Bruno Mars.
In recent years, competition has raged between investment vehicles such as Hipgnosis, Concord or Primary Wave, with the major labels in the recording industry, such as Universal Music, in ambush.
The appetite of investors for music rights is largely due to the emergence of streaming, which has opened up opportunities for an industry that was looking for a new model in the early 2000s.
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