Bob Dylan sells songwriting catalog to Universal
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In a landmark deal announced Monday, Bob Dylan sold his entire back catalog of more than 600 songs to Universal Music Group’s publishing arm including towering classics like 1960’s counterculture songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”
UMG did not disclose the terms, but said in a statement, “The deal is the most significant music publishing agreement this century and one of the most important of all time.”
The deal is likely to have swelled the coffers of the man who once wrote “money doesn’t talk, it swears” by many millions of dollars. The Financial Times said it could be in nine figures.
Dylan, who emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s to become arguably the most acclaimed and influential artist of the rock era, is still going strong at the age of 79, releasing his latest album "Rough and Rowdy Ways," this year.
The first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was playing about 100 dates a year on his “Never Ending Tour” until the coronavirus pandemic forced him to cancel.
His songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times by hundreds of artists and he has sold more than 125 million records globally.
