Katy Perry Sells Music Catalog: How Much Does it Cost?
The singer has released 5 albums in her 15-year music career under her current name
Katy Perry has become one of the latest global stars to take the plunge. And we’re not talking about getting married or skydiving. The Californian artist has sold the songs included in her five studio albums for a price exceeding $225 million. The agreement between the singer and Litmus Music, through Capital Records, includes all of the artist’s studio projects from 2008 to 2020. Universal Music will continue to own the original masters of the recording studio for the last 5 years.
One of the Boys (2008), Teenage Dream (2010), PRISM (2013), Witness (2017), and Smile (2020) contain all the songs that catapulted Katy Perry to the Olympus of international music stars, thanks to hits like Roar, I Kissed a Girl, Firework…
«I feel very honored to partner with her again and to help Litmus manage her incredible catalog. (…) She is a creative visionary who has had a significant impact on music, television, film, and philanthropy,» said Dan McCarroll in the statement.
With a new music project on the horizon, Katy Perry is handing over the rights to her songs in exchange for a substantial sum of money for commercial exploitation. It’s a forward-looking move rather than a backward one, a path already taken by other artists like Dr. Dre, Justin Bieber, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson…
A new musical era that will put an end to several years of musical silence: «I haven’t released any new material since my beloved Daisy. I think I’m writing a lot, and I’ve written a lot from a place of love because I feel a lot of that, so much unconditional love, the kind of love you never knew existed,» explained Katy Perry.
It’s not just Katy Perry; several companies have acquired various significant catalogs, including those of David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Paul Simon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pink Floyd, or Shakira, among many others. It’s a direct way to achieve immediate profitability from something that successors will find more challenging to sell as a product of the past, not the present or the future.