🔵 Hipgnosis' £18M song sale raises questions
Namely, what was sold, and are catalogues being broken up for divestment?
Hi there -
News broke today that the troubled Hipgnosis Songs Fund has sold £18M of "unspecified ‘non-core’” songs, presumably in a bid to stem cash flow issues after a fairly terrible year’s trading.
This raises two questions for me. Obviously the first is “what was sold?”, as the company seems unwilling to specify. Perhaps the other, more important question is whether this was a sale of whole catalogue(s), or specific songs.
If the latter - which feels plausible - it surely raises questions regarding how catalogue is traded, and whether artists have any say if any owning company were to decide to divest lesser-known tracks.
In some respects this parallels the advent of download stores, when numerous artists include AC/DC and Led Zeppelin took issue with the means to sell all tracks from an album separately. In their view, allowing people to cherry pick songs rather than acquire the whole album ruined the artistic vision for the work they had spent time perfecting.
A similar mindset could surely apply here. Is it OK that an album’s constituent tracks might have multiple owners? After all, the complexities this might introduce could be many.
Once again, I’d argue this flags a perhaps unforeseen side effect of selling catalogue. A colleague made a similar point when asking what happens to Hipgnosis when Merck, who many artists sold to on the basis he closely understood their catalogue, may no longer be around to protect it. Not a nice comment, granted, but again it raises a key question around protection of catalogue the works that might cover.
Perhaps a blunt answer is that if you really care about the legacy of your catalogue, you should not sell it. That, or you simply ensure protections are in place, such as specifying that songs within a catalogue may not be sold individually.
To be clear, I am not stating that Hipgnosis has definitely broken up catalogue(s) for sale. However I do feel it once again gives cause to question whether, in time, these sales might wind up being something artists bitterly regret agreeing to.
Have a great evening,
D.
🎶 listening to “Eminence Front” by The Who. Arguably one of few post-Moon gems, I first discovered this track in a turntable.fm room about 12 years ago. If that doesn’t date exactly when I first heard it, nothing will! I also remembered too late to enter it in the most recent Network Notes Music League round - “Slept-On Gems By Legends”. Doh!!
📺 watching “This Machine Destroys EVERYTHING”. I couldn’t help but watch this wondering if I could get one for the inevitable new year’s house clearout 😆
🤖 playing with Music Map, a fun means to explore similar artists. Just tap in someone whose music you’re enjoying and watch it spit back a nodal map of related acts.
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Beyoncé and Neil Young song fund Hipgnosis sells 20,000 songs for £18m
The fund said on Monday that it had sold 20,000 unspecified “non-core” songs for $23.1m (£18.4m), in a statement to the London Stock Exchange, where it is listed. The price was a 14% discount to their valuation at 30 September, in a sign of the company’s need for cash as it tries to meet its debt obligations.
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