Bob Dylan has sold his entire back catalog of recorded music to Sony Music Entertainment in a landmark deal that starts with his 1962 self-titled debut album, continues with 2020’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” and includes rights to multiple future releases, according to the record company.
While Sony did not disclose how much it paid, sources told Variety the sale price is estimated to be worth $150 million to $200 million.
The deal, which concluded in July and was announced Monday, is a “major expansion” in Sony’s six-decade relationship with Dylan, who was signed to the company’s Columbia Records in October 1961.
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“Columbia Records has had a special relationship with Bob Dylan from the beginning of his career and we are tremendously proud and excited to be continuing to grow and evolve our ongoing 60-year partnership,” Sony Music Group Chairman Rob Stringer said in a statement.
“We’re thrilled he will now be a permanent member of the Sony Music family,” he added. “We are excited to work with Bob and his team to find new ways to make his music available to his many fans today and to future generations.”
The 80-year-old artist, known for blending folk music with rock and roll and poetry, said of the agreement: “Columbia Records and Rob Stringer have been nothing but good to me for many, many years and a whole lot of records. I’m glad that all my recordings can stay where they belong.”
The announcement comes more than a year after Dylan sold his entire catalog of songs to Universal Music Group, which involves the rights to his lyrics and compositions. A source familiar with that deal told NBC News that the sale price was “a sizable nine figure amount, north of $200M.”
Under the Sony agreement, Dylan and the company will collaborate on future catalog reissues and partner for additional projects.
Dylan emerged from New York’s Greenwich Village folk music scene, and has been nothing short of prolific since.
Songs like “The Times They Are A-Changin,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and “Like a Rolling Stone” became part of the soundtrack of the 1960s and still resonate with the generations that followed.
Dylan has sold more than 125 million records around the world and his catalog includes rock classics like “Forever Young,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Make You Feel My Love,” and the Academy Award-winning “Things Have Changed.”
Former President Barack Obama praised Dylan’s contribution to the musical landscape.
“There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music,” Obama said when he awarded Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Four years later, Dylan became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
