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Red Hot Chili Peppers ink $300M deal with Warner Music to sell catalog

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-industry-news/wmg-acquired-red-hot-chili-peppers-catalog-for-350-million-1236589567/
40•randycupertino•1h ago
https://guitar.com/news/industry-news/red-hot-chili-peppers-...

Comments

Forgeties79•32m ago
That honestly sounds like a good deal for the buyer at first blush but can’t say I’m an expert here
mxfh•25m ago
With the trend of things, this seems like good timing for the RHCP estates with a not so unlikely collapse of licensing revenue happening in the near future.
NoboruWataya•8m ago
I wonder if you tend to see more artists selling their back catalogues at times like this when some technological disruption is casting doubt on their ability to continue to generate income from them. David Bowie was famously one of the first artists to securitise music royalties, in 1997, basically at the dawn of the digital copying era.
thierrydamiba•8m ago
This is as close as you get to a win win in life.
afavour•32m ago
I'm surprised the number is this low! Queen sold their catalogue for $1.27bn and while RHCP are clearly not on their scale I thought they were pretty high up there, especially given how long they've been active.
Waterluvian•28m ago
All subjective and all that. But I feel like 300M vs. 1.27B is exactly where I would have personally pinned their ratio difference.

To roughly frame it: if we made another golden record, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had 4 Queen songs and 1 RHCP song.

vages•25m ago
In terms of artistic quality, perhaps. In terms of expected future royalties, I think Queen would be an order of magnitude more valuable than most artists.
vasco•18m ago
So its all good since it sold for an order of magnitude more
sho_hn•24m ago
Same, or worse. Having lived in Europe and Korea I can tell you numerous Queen songs have instant recognizability the world over, but I would say RHCP are a household name mostly in the US, except maybe some older people recognizing Californication as a distinctly 90s happening.
piskov•19m ago
Sting reportedly got $300 mil back in 2022
manquer•16m ago
It was also a different market in 2024. Much more fluid private credit industry, deal volume was much higher[1] and under very different interest rate regime[2], also generated music was just getting somewhat decent and the risk probably wasn't being factored in to long term value yet.

[1] The Queen deal came at end of series of high profile catalog acquisitions all 500M+ buys - Springsteen, Jackson(half), Bob Dylan.

[2] Interest rate while high was trending down and widely expected to even reach to pre-pandemic levels in few quarters.

shwaj•31m ago
Relatively small amount compared to the billions we see thrown around for AI startups a couple of years old.
xnx•24m ago
True, but don't be fooled by imaginary "valuations" in the billions. RHCP is definitely getting paid real money.
perarneng•27m ago
Hard to tell what the value of music will be in 5 years
nine_k•7m ago
The value of guaranteed real stuff, with known provenance, still remains in the world of mass production; a "real Luis Vuitton bag" is still worth more than a very good copy, or a very good bag from an unknown designer.

But most of the market, is, of course, lower end. Probably "good enough" machine-produced music is going to dominate casual playlists, but some bands still will have large followings, and live show still be valuable.

mxfh•27m ago
This is one of the reasons we can't have proper soundtracks in video games or non AAA TV shows anymore or re-releases of old TV-shows anymore.

I just feel bad for all the pension fonds backing this Bain Capital PE joint venture who will have an off chance of making back their investments with the current state of IP and AI trends.

fraywing•27m ago
Music and streaming is severely under attack from an effort/commercial viability perspective given tools like Suno[1]

Not exactly saying this is the reason for their sell, but I'd imagine a lot of professional musicians are feeling the desire to exit the industry.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/05/02/nx-s1-5804489/music-listeners...

hmokiguess•26m ago
Give it away, give it away, give it away now

Give it away, give it away, give it away now

Give it away, give it away, give it away now

I can't tell, if I'm a king pin or a pauper

liveoneggs•25m ago
Every credit card rewards program will "give it away now" from now on
aidos•25m ago
That does seem like less than I would expect!

It always makes me a bit sad that everyone knows RHCP but less so their early stuff. Blood sugar sex magik is a funk masterpiece. Didn’t help that for years Spotify used the singles versions of the tracks so the levels were all over the place and it was basically unstreamable.

ThomW•19m ago
Freaky Styley is their funk masterpiece. haha
throw0101c•24m ago
PSA: this article is re-reporting the original story at:

> Rumours of the Chilis selling their catalogue first arose last year, with sources telling Billboard that the rockers were allegedly seeking around $350 million. Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports[1] that the band has finally made a deal with Warner Music Group, with the label paying over $300 million for all of the band’s master recordings.

[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-industry-news/...

tomhow•17m ago
Thanks, we updated the linkl.

Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

neom•24m ago
Re: the "low price", they'd already sold their publishing right in 2021 for $140MM, so this is the mastering rights they sold for 300. By comparison, Springsteen sold both his together to Sony in 2021 for $500MM.
embedding-shape•19m ago
I don't think they're just selling the mastering rights here, it's the rights for the recordings that are being played that is being sold here.

> The new deal with Warner Music Group hands over the rights to the official recordings, meaning the label will profit from any further streaming, radio play or album sales.

Edit: I'm stupid, you mean "master rights", which is correct, they're getting the rights of the masters. Your typo made me think of the act of mastering music, not the "masters".

gedy•24m ago
Good for them. I have a memory of first seeing them in their video True Men Don't Kill Coyotes† around 1984? and thinking "wow these guys are terrible". In hindsight, they were very 90s and pretty ahead of their time.

† https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC3j1pNXhSU

baggachipz•21m ago
$300 million, all songs about California

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