By Pat Capone, Patrick CaponeJan 21, 2021

Sell! Sell! Sell!
It’s been a crazy year with dozens of high profile individuals in the music industry cashing in their publishing rights for immediate liquidity, and legendary producer Bob Rock is the latest to jump on the bandwagon. Mr. Rock has reportedly sold the rights to over 40 of his songs, including his rights in Metallica’s Black Album.

“The breadth of Bob Rock’s enormous successes are almost impossible to match by any creator in the history of music,” said Hipgnosis Songs Founder Merck Mercuriadis, who had previously been the manager for high profile artists Elton John and Beyoncé.

Bob is not the first music business big shot to jump on the Hipgnosis band wagon. Just this month the Hipgnosis Song Fund announced lucrative deals with Shakira and Neil Young.

Unlike many of the other recent deals, Bob Rock’s end on the sell out was not disclosed.. But I’ll bet it wasn’t cheap.

If streaming is such a dead end for artists, why is Hipgnosis buying up all of these artists publishing rights?
That is a seriously good strategy question that only the founder Merck Mercuriadis could answer, but my gut tells me it has to do with the numbers. While one artist might not be able to make a living off of the pitiful amount they make from the streams of even a hit song, if you add all of these artists together you have a different figure. This seems to be a bet on the long term opportunity. For example, Metallica’s self titled Black Album has been streamed over 1 Billion times alone.

So how is it working out?

Well, Hipgnosis Song Fund was recently listed on the London Stock Exchange, so we do have some numbers. It looks like they are in the black for about $25 million from last year, even with all of these recent acquisitions.

Personally, I can’t help but question why all of these high profile artists are suddenly willing to sell off the only thing that brings them in cash. My grandfather would quote the old “bird in the hand..” phrase right about now, and maybe he would be correct, but I am just not sure I buy into it. Something is up. It’s like a fire sale all of a sudden, with every artist and producer willing to pull a move like a guy trying to cash in on a lawsuit settlement with JG Wentworth. Something seems odd here to me.

In case you were wondering how much artists make per stream, the average on Spotify is between $0.00331 and $0.00437 per stream. Now, imagine splitting that miniscule amount up between all of the band members, producer, other songwriters, and record company.. as well as anybody else that might have been promised a piece of the action.

For those not great at decimals and percentages, it takes about 1000 streams for an artists, who owns all of his own publishing rights alone, to make 3 cents. As you can see, it is not lucrative. For example, a living wage is considered between $45,000 and $55,000 a year depending on where you live.. at that rate, to just barely make a living wage, you would need to stream about 750,000 times every month. Maybe, gramps was right about the “bird in the hand”.