Bob Dylan Sells Catalog Of Recordings To Sony Music

A number of artists have struck big-money deals to sell off their song catalogs in the last year – now Bob Dylan has done it twice.

On Monday, Sony Music announced a $200 million deal to buy Dylan’s complete recordings, including all of his albums and “the rights to multiple future releases”.

The deal is separate from the nearly $400 million deal Dylan made in December 2020 to sell his songwriting rights to Universal Music Publishing Group.

How are these deals different?  Basically, Universal owns the licensing rights to Dylan’s songs and lyrics – meaning it can license the songs for commercials, movies, or even to other artists to cover.  Sony’s deal only applies to the original Dylan recordings of those songs.

Why are so many of these deals going down?