Under the Bridge is still my favorite...

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner Sometimes I feel like my only friend Is the city I live in, The City of Angels Lonely as I am, together we cry

Unimpressed by material excess

A valid concern generally, but if you're concerned about soundtrack quality, RHCP has done the world a favor by locking it up inside Warner.

In a world full of endless AI slop, wouldn't original recordings become more valuable over time?

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".

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.

Beyond a certain amount, the actual number becomes meaningless especially for people who already have dynastic wealth not even counting this. It's just what they happened to negotiate.

It's quite a retirement package.

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.

yeah also surprised.

and as mentioned elsewhere, RHCP is still young enough to crank out a few more albums and tour. Bruce Springsteen kept cranking until his 80s and sold the catalog for $500M

I assume the band is basically tapped out and ready to rest on laurels

Sting reportedly got $300 mil back in 2022

Freaky Styley is their funk masterpiece. haha

$300M is a lot though.

Out in L.A.

It's a bit like an individual person taking the option of receiving a lottery payment in one large lump sum (and nothing else, ever), vs. receiving ongoing monthly/annual payments for some period going into the future. The new owner pays them one big lump sum and then the new owner gets all rights to license the content for things like car commercials on TV, streaming, reissues of box sets, radio, etc. Also for derivative works of all forms and basically whatever the new owner wants to do with it.

They sold the future royalties. "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."

All of the above. They are probably required to still perform the songs on behalf of Warner Music but that's it. They are free to write more music... Old music is no longer theirs though.

They have an asset that earns regular income. They are selling the asset and forgoing the regular income in exchange for a lump sum from the sale.

For instance if you own a rental property, you get regular income from rent. If you sell the house you get a lump sum and no longer get any rent.

In this case the asset is musical recordings.

> By the way,

> I tried to say

> CRAZY BIG BOB IS HAVING ANOTHER CRAZY SALE THIS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!!!

> so don't wait for Dani, come on down and say "I love you" to a pre-owned Nissan!

Well Flea just released a jazz record where he plays trumpet. I admire him for it, but might need some financing now.

https://youtu.be/1r0k2AW153g?si=-J6qNeyc3dHQJ6Gk

Maybe trying to escape the wealth tax?

Please no more California songs.

Someone writes an NPV and everyone says great! I looked into the math a bit when Bieber sold his. Didn’t seem worth it but what do I know.

listens continuing to decline year after year.

Streaming music is only the tip of the iceberg.

Most TV commercials are using 30-year-old songs. Add to that streaming series (think Stranger Things), movies, public spaces, internet radio, actual radio, and hundreds of other licensing opportunities await.

True, but don't be fooled by imaginary "valuations" in the billions. RHCP is definitely getting paid real money.

The value of guaranteed real stuff, with known provenance, still remains in the world of mass production; a "real Louis 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.

Digital music? Probably non-existent. Live music played by actual musicians? Just as much.

Not really, I don't want to listen to AI slop.

Can't wait for the pharmaceutical commercials with RHCP jingles

It'll be a Broadway play first to test it out.

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.

This is as close as you get to a win win in life.

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

As a record maker, I'd say record making is under attack from Suno about as much as novelists are under attack from Chat GPT. Both still require a crafts person to steer the tools, if they're to be used at all.

Yes there will be slop, but neither Suno nor GPT are close to making coherent work with creators with taste and good judgement.