Two years ago, MBW published a popular story with an attention-grabbing headline: “Queen’s music makes insane money. Could it be worth over a billion dollars?”
The answer to this question, which we are now hearing from several high-profile music industry sources, is a resounding yes.
We’re told that the first stages of a sale process for the band’s catalog – which includes both music publishing and recorded music rights – is underway and that the full acquisition could be complete by the end of this summer.
Major music companies including Universal Music Group In addition to players from the world of private equity, we also had talks about a possible takeover, it said.
According to MBW sources, when the combined Queen rights are sold, the price will be more than $1 billion seems guaranteed.
Some have told us they expect the Queen catalog to sell for around €100 $1.1 billion; others say the final figure will be even higher.
Either way, should a sale go through, it would be the largest single artist music catalog sale in history and would far exceed it the over $500 million payed by Sony Music Group Acquire Bruce Springsteen’s music recordings and music publishing catalogs by the end of 2021.
(For the Springsteen Publishers Catalog forming part of this Agreement, SonyThe offer of was partially backed by capital from Eldridge Industries.)
This makes a Queen catalog sale more difficult Disney Music Group (DMG) owns the band’s music catalog in North America. (DMG has a global distribution agreement with Universal Music Group.)
Queen band members Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon and the Freddie Mercury estate each own equal shares in the company Queen Productions Ltdwho owns the group’s record catalog outside the US and Canada.
The members of Queen (plus Mercury’s estate) also own the worldwide rights to Queen’s music publishing catalog through their company Queen Music Ltdwhich is managed by Sony Music Publishing.
Queen Productions Ltd publishes its annual financial figures in the UK Companies House. The latest financial figures show the company’s financial performance in fiscal year 2021 (ending at the end of September this year).
Queen Productions Ltd reported £39.19m in annual sales in fiscal year 2021, with £38.92million of which comes from royalties.
Queen Productions Ltd. reported record annual sales of £72.77m in fiscal year 2019, the year of the successful worldwide release of Bohemian Rhapsody biopic.
During the three years from 2019 to 2021, Queen Productions Ltd’s average annual license revenue was £50.71m.
Queen is currently the 48th most popular artist worldwide Spotifywith 47.7 million monthly listeners on the platform.
Queen’s isn’t the only expensive music rights catalog to be negotiated for a sale (or partial sale) in the coming months.
The Michael Jackson Estate is understood to be in talks with Sony Music Group over the sale of a stake in the late King Of Pop’s rights portfolio – from recorded music rights to related rights MJ: The musical Theater show, as well as music publishing rights through Jackson-founded music publishing company Mijac.
diversity reported In February, Sony Music Group announced that it was in negotiations to acquire 50% of Jackson’s music rights for a price in the range of US$800 million to US$900 million.
A source close to the process has suggested that the number could end up being a little lower, somewhere between $700 million and $800 million.music business worldwide
