Two years ago, MBW posted a famous story with an attention-grabbing headline: “The queen’s music is making money crazy. Could it be worth more than a billion dollars?”
The answer to the question we now hear from many high-level sources in the music industry, is a clear yes.
We are told that the first stages of the band’s catalog sale – combining both the music publishing rights and the music recording rights – are underway and a full acquisition could be completed. all by the end of this summer.
Major music companies include Popular music group We discussed potential acquisitions, in addition to players from the private equity world, we were told.
According to MBW sources, if the combined Queen’s rights are sold, a price in excess of 1 billion USD seems secure.
Several people have told us that they expect the Queen catalog to sell for around 1.1 billion USD; Others say the final figure will be even higher.
Either way, if the sale is complete, it will become the largest single-artist catalog sale in history, easily surpassing more than 500 million dollars pay in Sony Music Corporation to acquire Bruce Springsteen’s recorded music and music publishing catalogs by the end of 2021.
(For the Springsteen publishing catalog portion of that agreement, sonyYour proposal is supported in part by your vocabulary Eldridge Industry.)
Selling under the Queen category is complicated by the fact that Disney Music Group (DMG) owns the band’s North American catalog of recorded music. (DMG has a global distribution agreement with Universal Music Group.)
Queen band members Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon – plus assets Freddie Mercury – each own equal shares in the company Queen Production Company LimitedThe company owns the group’s record portfolio outside of the United States and Canada.
Members of Queen (plus Mercury’s assets) also own global rights to Queen’s music publishing portfolio through their company Queen Music Company LimitedManaged by Music Publisher Sony.
Queen Productions Ltd publishes its annual financial statements on the UK Companies House, the latest of which shows the company’s financial performance for the financial year 2021 (up to the end of September of that year).
Queen Productions Ltd reports 39.19 million pounds on annual revenue for fiscal year 2021, with 38.92 million pounds of this figure comes through royalties.
Queen Productions Ltd. announced record-high annual sales 72.77 million pounds in the 2019 financial year, the year of the successful global release of Bohemian Rhapsody story.
For the three years from 2019 to 2021, Queen Productions Ltd’s average annual royalty revenue is 50.71 million pounds.
Queen is currently the 48th most popular artist globally Spotifywith 47.7 million won monthly listeners on the platform.
Queen’s isn’t the only high-earning music copyright category being discussed for sale (or partial sale) in the coming months.
The Michael Jackson Estate is understood to be in discussions with Sony Music Group about the sale of shares in the late King Of Pop’s portfolio of rights – including recorded music rights, rights to MJ: Musical drama, plus publishing rights to the music through the music publishing company Jackson founded, Mijac.
Diversity report In February, Sony Music Group is in talks to buy 50% of Jackson’s music rights for $800 to $900 million.
A source close to that process has suggested that the final figure could be slightly lower than that, somewhere between $700 million and $800 million.Global Music Business
