Justin Bieber sells rights to his music for $200M | Hacker News Reader

Justin Bieber sells rights to his music for $200M

theguardian.com

12 pointstosh12 comments

I don’t really get how it works that Hipgnosis owns the library and future royalties, but UMG still owns the copyrights to all the music? How does that work and what does that mean exactly?

UMG presumably have to defend the copyright to maintain it, so they get all the costs and none of the upside benefits?

As I understand it, Hipognosis owns the actual audio recordings. UMG owns the copyrights to the music and lyrics. So if you want to record a new version, you talk to UMG. If you want to play the one Beiber performed you talk to Hipgnosis.

You can see an extreme example with Taylor Swift not owning the original recordings, hence her re-recording her songs ten years later.

Other way around. UMG: Bieber's recordings. Hipgnosis: publishing copyrights (music and lyrics), neighbouring rights (public performances of Bieber's recordings, mostly outside the US), and Hipgnosis bought Bieber's downstream artist royalties for use of the recordings (UMG will still own them but pay Hipgnosis instead of Bieber for the royalties previously owed to Bieber under the terms of his record deal)

Thanks for the correction!

What will he do now? Will he still make music or is this his way of saying he's done for life? Does this mean he gets $0 going forward from things like Spotify streams? Will he still go on tour? Is this all because of https://utswmed.org/medblog/ramsay-hunt-syndrome-facial-para... ?

It's hard for artist to make money by selling their music. They make way more by touring. I bet he'll continue to tour and he probably keeps the right to continue to sing his songs without having to pay a fee. It make sense to sell them. The company that buys them has an incentive to make sure they will continue to be streamed which only increases the demand for his concerts.

He sold the rights to his songs so that's it; he gets no more money from them. 200 million is a good chunk of cash. He's set for the rest of his life even when you factor in taxes. Good for him.

for existing music, or any and all new music?

I don't know. It would be interesting to find out. I suspect it's his current catalog. If it was future too then Bieber would have little incentive to put out new music since he would get no additional benefit from the extra work. But only they, the parties involved, know.

From the beginning of the article:

>The 28-year-old has sold all the rights to the 291 songs he has released, or has an interest in, up until the end of 2021

Most of these types of catalog sales are back catalog only. Bieber's is too:

"In any event, the far-reaching buyout encompasses a “100% interest” in London, Ontario-born Bieber’s publishing (“including the writer’s share of performance”), on top of the artist’s masters and neighboring rights for his more than 290-work back catalog. The latter specifically includes the two-time Grammy winner’s projects that released before December 31st, 2021."

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/01/24/hipgnosis-song-m...

Concerts, new music, merch, he'll be okay lol. He's set for life anyway, as long as he didn't blow his money on his entourage like MC hammer.

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