The trend is accelerating.
After Bob Dylan, Neil Young and singer Shakira, the American alternative rock group The Red Hot Chili Peppers is in turn selling its catalog of songs to an investment fund.
According to information from the American Billboard site, the troupe of Anthony Kiedis and Michael Balzary (known as Flea) has sold their entire repertoire to one of the giants of music rights management, the British Hipgnosis, for a sum estimated between 140 and 150 million dollars.
Contacted Tuesday by AFP, neither Hipgnosis nor the group responded to requests for interviews.
Read also: Bob Dylan sells all of his songs to Universal Music
Founded in 1983, the Red Hot Chili Peppers only rose to prominence in 1992 with their album
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
, from which the title
Under The Bridge was taken
, which remains their greatest success.
In total, the group placed seven albums in the top 10 sales in the United States, including
Californication
, which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Since its inception and listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, Hipgnosis has raised more than 1.1 billion pounds ($ 1.5 billion).
Labels in ambush
Created by the former manager of Elton John or Iron Maiden, Merck Mercuriadis, the fund has invested several hundred millions of dollars in music rights at a steady pace. He now controls a series of popular music classics, as well as the rights to dozens of recent hits, including
Ed Sheeran's
Shape of You
and
Uptown Funk!
by Bruno Mars.
In recent years, competition has been raging between investment funds such as Hipgnosis, Concord or Primary Wave, with the major labels in the recording industry, such as Universal Music, in ambush. Their appetite for musical rights is due in large part to the emergence of streaming, which has opened up opportunities for an industry which, since the early 2000s, has been looking for a new model.
