Adapted from Words Like That S2 Ep. 3: “Queen Sells Out…Literally," originally released July 2, 2024.
As originally reported in Variety, Queen, one of the greatest rock bands of all time, has reportedly sold their catalog to Sony for 1.27 billion U.S. dollars. While some of the North American rights will remain with Disney and Universal due to pre-existing agreements, most of the global rights and royalties will transfer to Sony. Queen follows other classic rock acts such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen in recently selling their catalog to Sony for a hefty sum.
When I, as a singer-songwriter/creator, see stories like these, I scratch my head. I think of sells like this in light of all the predatory contracts of the ‘50s, 60s, and ‘70s, when the modern music industry was in its infancy and crooked labels, managers, and agents duped innocent young talent into signing away rights to their songs. This was a practice that later spawned a number of lawsuits involving high-profile acts, including Tom Petty, The Eagles, and my personal musical hero, John Fogerty.
Fogerty recently went in the opposite direction of Queen by buying a majority stake in his old catalog. That’s a move that makes a lot more sense to me. To me, it's as if someone has kidnapped your kids, and the only way you can get them back was to pay a ransom. How do you react in that scenario? You pay the ransom. In the case of Queen, Dylan, etc., it’s as though someone has offered to buy your kids for a lot of money, with intention of using them as slave labor, and your response is, “Yeah, sure. Deal.”
I use the children analogy because, when I first began writing as a teenager, my songs were the closest things I had to children. Now, I knew even then that songs are no real comparison to children, and I can confirm that now that I have actual children. Even still, each song was special to me. Each song still is special to me, even the ones I’ve never released, or never will release, or that I’ve grown to be irritated by, or that are objectively terrible and have been cannibalized to create other songs or scrapped all together. They’re special because they originate from a similar place as the natural human desire to have children: a drive to create and nurture something that will survive as a legacy after we’re gone.
Consequently, the idea of selling the rights to my songs as these others artists are doing is unconscionable. I know it’s a lot of money, but I’ve never been in this for the money. I’ve been in the music industry officially for almost 14 years, and if I were in it for the money, I would have quit 12 years ago. Same with the Words Like That podcast from which this treatise has been adapted. I’ve been producing episodes when I can for almost a year now, and I’m making virtually zilch on the show. Factoring in time and resources, I’m losing money. But I continue to do it because it’s something I want, and feel like I need, to do.
Regardless, these guys don’t really need the money. So why sell? Or is that the key? They’re well-seasoned fellows, and they know, realistically, they’ve only got a few years left. So are they looking at this as, “We don’t need the continued royalty money, so why not just cash in, live out the remainder of our lives on it, and bequeath the rest to our posterity?"
Sure, I’ve reached nowhere near the level these guys have, and realistically, I never will. I’m also much younger than they are, so maybe my perspective will change if I live that long. But as it stands, unless my family were in dire need of cash, I can’t fathom relinquishing ownership of my creations like that, no matter how big the check.
Beyond my inability to understand these artists' relinquishing ownership to their creations, I’m also concerned about the growing corporate conglomerates acquiring all the world’s intellectual property. Originally, copyright laws were designed to incentivize artists to create art. If legal protections that allow artists to earn money from their art without fear of infringement are in place, artists are more likely to create original works. This is how I and many other independent singer/songwriters/musicians have been able to make what little money we have in our careers. I own many composition copyrights and, as an indie record label owner, I also own copyrights to many master recordings.
As art industries have developed, however, multinational corporations have been afforded the same protections as individual creators, which has allowed them to buy up intellectual property en masse, then leverage their money and power to globally control art. And this isn’t just in the music industry; it’s in the film, television, and publishing industries too.
In the U.S., companies like Disney have successfully lobbied lawmakers to repeatedly overhaul copyright laws to benefit corporations and stifle smaller creators who lack resources to fight corporate-led challenges to their own endeavors. As a result, works that should have long entered the public domain, thereby becoming eligible for creative derivation, have been locked in corporate IP vaults under the full of protection of the law.
Whether we realize it or not, there are no new stories under the sun, and derivation has been the backbone of storytelling since time in memoriam. But when entities are allowed to control the use of works for over a century, talented creatives are prevented from being able to create new derivative works which could surpass the originals and positively impact culture, potentially far into the future.
Had modern copyright laws existed in 16th-century Europe, Shakespeare would likely have never written Romeo and Juliet for fear of being by sued by William Painter, who penned the anthological Palace of Pleasure, as well as whatever entity had ended up with the rights to Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, the Bard’s chief sources for his play. Then again, neither Painter nor Brooke would have likely ever written their works, lest they ran afoul of whomever had emerged with the copyright to Matteo Bandello’s original tale upon which all of the above works were based.
I find myself wondering, “How many great works of art has the world missed out on because of modern copyright law?”
In addition, regarding fair use—which is the right of a second party to use copyrighted material for certain purposes—platforms like YouTube grant copyright owners/managers the exclusive right to say whether another creators’ use of copyrighted material is fair. If the owner/manager rules that the use of a given copyrighted work isn’t fair use, the creator who used the copyrighted material has little recourse to argue, even if the use is legitimately fair in the legal sense. The bigger the copyright owner/manager, the less ability the independent creator has to fight.
I’ve experienced this first hand as a YouTube reactor on the Randomine Records channel. While the use of copyrighted material in our videos is always transformative, educational, and critical—all valid legal criteria for fair use in the U.S.—if a copyright owner claims our use of copyrighted material isn’t fair, we lose the right to control the video as we see fit. Worst case scenario, we could one day receive a copyright strike. If we receive three copyright strikes in 90 days, we lose our channel forever.
Therefore, I see every intellectual property dump like this is a harm to art as an industry and human creativity as a whole.
Although I have some ideas, I'm not entirely certain how to balance the rights of creators and businesses with the cultural need for proliferating stories. But I do know something needs to change with our current model, and with properties like Mickey Mouse finally being allowed to enter the public domain, I think that change may be on the horizon.
What do you think about this sale? Why do you think Queen is selling? Is there a price tag on your creations? Do you think corporate stock piling of intellectual property is a good thing? Should corporations be allowed to own intellectual property for a century or more? Let us know in the comments or send us an email to randominerecords @ yahoo.com (no spaces).
Cole Powell is an arts and media commentator and award-winning singer/songwriter from Jayess, Mississippi, USA. Powell holds degrees in computer technology and liberal arts and sciences and wants to be a comic book artist when he grows up and learns to draw.