David Bowie: Warner Chappell buys publishing rights to all songs

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Bowie (1973): Valuable publishing rights

Photo: Justin de Villeneuve / Getty Images

Negotiations have been going on for months, now it's official: David Bowie's heirs are selling the rights to his songs to the music publisher Warner Chappell Music.

The group announced this in a press release.

The deal includes every David Bowie song ever released, including songs from soundtracks and tracks he wrote for his band project Tin Machine.

Bowie released 25 albums as a solo artist during his lifetime, the last work "Blackstar" was published posthumously after his death on January 10, 2016. At the end of 2021, the album "Toy" was published from the estate;

a deluxe box will be released on January 7th.

The hundreds of songs to which Warner acquired the publishing rights include well-known classics such as "Space Oddity", "Changes", "Ziggy Stardust", "Heroes" and "Ashes To Ashes".

Nothing was officially known about the purchase price.

The industry magazine "Variety" quotes unnamed sources, according to which Warner Chappell spends more than $ 250 million on the publishing rights.

In the past few months, many artists have sold the rights to their songs.

In mid-December it was announced that Bruce Springsteen had sold his entire catalog of rights to Sony, according to the "New York Times" for $ 500 million.

Tina Turner, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon also monetized their work this way.

The reasons are, among other things, declining sales of sound carriers and, due to the pandemic, collapsing concert income - while revenues from the streaming and series boom are becoming more valuable for the industry.

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