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Queen‘s music is essentially inescapable. “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Another One Bites The Dust” have been seemingly omnipresent ever since their release, while “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” has been used at every sporting event since the invention of sports. You get the idea – Queen is still just as massive as they’ve ever been, and that might result in a gargantuan paycheck.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Queen is in talks with Sony to possibly sell their catalog for up around $1 billion (or £790 million). If the deal goes through, it would be the single largest sale of any band’s catalog to have ever happened.
The sale would include Queen‘s music, logos, merchandise, publishing, and everything else associated with the band. For the record, the largest sale of any band’s catalog to date was Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue in late 2021 for about $501 million (£393 million).
So why now? As Music Business Worldwide points out, Queen‘s profitability shot through the roof in 2019 with the release of their Bohemian Rhapsody movie. Whether or not the $1 billion deal goes through remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain – it’s probably not great that a handful of companies are going to eventually own the majority of classic artists. And if there’s enough money to be made off the catalogs of classic artists by bigger corporations, then the constant struggle of smaller artists can more safely be put aside for the larger paychecks.
Not to say that Queen doesn’t deserve the success – they’ve written some timeless bangers – but a $1 billion check for a catalog while a very massive chunk of artists are out there struggling to pay basic bills kinda sucks a little.
