Fleetwood Mac co-founder and drummer Mick Fleetwood is selling his entire catalog of recorded music to BMG, the company said Rolling Stone. BMG will receive the share of royalties from the musician in a catalog of 300 songs that includes tracks like “The Chain”, “Go Your Own Way” and “Dreams”, the last of which resurfaced among teenagers due to a mega-popular TikTok video.
BMG declined to say how much the company paid in the deal, but said it was the largest single acquisition that BMG made in two years.
Fleetwood, with this sale, becomes the third member of Fleetwood Mac to sell catalog rights to a third party investor or manager – following in the footsteps of Stevie Nicks, who sold her publishing rights to Primary Wave Music in December, and former member Lindsey Buckingham, who sold her publishing rights to the Hipgnosis Songs Fund last week. Fleetwood Mac is one of the best-selling bands of all time, having sold 54 million certified units, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Rumors, the band’s 1977 album, sold over 20 million certified units and is ranked seventh inside Rolling Stones List of the 500 best albums of all time. “Dreams”, a single from that album, recently climbed its way back onto the music charts four decades after its release, thanks to the virility fueled by TikTok.
Several dozen other artists and composers have sold their rights in the past few months, including Bob Dylan and Neil Young. For music creators, the incentive is a large sum of money paid in advance; for buyers, ownership of the rights of these stars will ideally translate into profitable sources of revenue for decades to come.
A key differentiator in the sale of Fleetwood compared to many of the other acquisitions in the past few months is that, instead of selling the publishing rights, the drummer is selling his recorded musical rights. Publication rights belong to the composition and composition, while the recorded rights refer to the actual recorded performance of the song. This means that publishing rights generally generate more revenue in the area of sync licensing (that is, when a song is licensed for use in a movie, TV, ad or video game) and the rights to the recorded music are more directly linked to streaming , downloads and album sales.
Justus Haerder, executive vice president of group strategy and M&A at BMG, said Rolling Stone This one BMG will look for several other businesses to participate in recorded music this year.
Haerder says the BMG expects publishing revenue, as a whole, to fall this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic interrupting live performances. (Whenever the music is played in concert, its composers receive a portion of the royalties.) In the meantime, the company expects the rights to recorded music to become more profitable – because music streaming is still growing worldwide and more listeners translate into more royalties – so BMG is more interested in acquiring recorded music rights than publishing rights, says Haerder.
“A lot of people are adopting the music IP behind the streaming world,” says Haerder. “When you really look at this, however, the recorded rights are those that are almost exclusively growing in the wake of streaming. Although the publication has also benefited, it is more multifaceted. That is why recorded now, in our opinion, is as attractive, if not more attractive, as an IP class in the musical space. “
“We firmly believe that these high-profile generation rights and catalogs have a high value for sustainable growth for future generations.”
He adds: “We think there may have been a little too much focus on publishing and that there are areas outside the publication – and not just registered – where we find these acquisitions attractive as well.”
BMG’s agreement with Fleetwood began to take shape in November, not long after “Dreams” emerged from the TikTok trend. That viral success was explicitly considered in the business, Haerder said.
Without providing specific names, Haerder says BMG is also looking at high-level recorded catalogs and expects to close more deals in 2021.
“It is a very competitive space out there, this was a competitive process, but we are definitely looking to do more of that,” he says. “We firmly believe that these high-profile generation rights and catalogs have a high value for sustainable growth for future generations and we want to work with these artists and add value to their work.”
In a statement, Fleetwood called the deal “a wonderfully inspiring marriage between two creative partners who understand all aspects” of the music business. “Above all, BMG understands art and puts the artist first,” he said. “If this partnership is any indication of my past, and now future, working relationship with BMG, it is that they really ‘got it’.”