Following the lead of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, one of Fleetwood Mac's founders, Mick Fleetwood, sold his share of the band's recordings to music giant BMG.
The deal covers the rights to classic albums such as "Rumors", "Tango In The Night" and "Tusk" for a total of around 300 songs and "18 hours of drumming", announced the music division of German media giant Bertelsmann. .
A few days ago the 1977 single of Fleetwood Mac "Dreams" had sent TikTok into fibrillation by collecting 2.9 million views followed by an avalanche of sales in streaming while in 2020 the greatest hits collection "50 Years - Don't Stop" entered the top ten albums of the year in the UK.
The agreement between BMG and Fleetwood differs from those reached by Dylan and Young: the two musicians limited themselves to selling respectively to Universal Music and the British Hipgnosis Songs Fund material from their music catalog, not the rights to the actual recordings.
Instead, Bmg paid a one-off sum to Mick Fleetwood in exchange for future proceeds from the distribution of his music including the "master tapes" created in the studio over the last 50 years.
Hipgnosis had recently bought the catalogs of another Fleetwood member, guitarist Mac Lindsay Buckingham, while Stevie Nick, another member of the band, had sold 80% of his songwriting production - including "Rhiannon" to the publisher. Primary Wave music for one hundred million dollars.
The boom in streaming services like Spotify in the months of the pandemic is behind the boom in sales of music catalogs generating revenue every time they are played on the radio, internet or used in movies, television shows or online fitness programs like Peloton.
But the lockdown that has blocked concerts and tours is also at stake ("I never sold my possessions unless I was forced to do so", said David Crosby, former member of the Byrds and co-founder of Crosby, Stills and Nash) for don't talk about the "age factor".
In addition to nearly 80-year-old (May 24) Dylan and 75-year-old Young, he recently sold Barry Manilow (77), while legendary Dolly Parton, 74, is thinking about it "for business and legacy purposes" as the end of his career approaches.