NEW YORK, NY.- Bob Dylan. Bruce Springsteen. Paul Simon. Neil Young. Stevie Nicks. All have sold their music catalogs over the past year and a half for huge sums, part of a broad transference of the ownership of a generations music from artists to corporations and investors. But is there any big game left?
One giant was hiding in plain sight: Neil Diamond, 81, the singer and songwriter of ubiquitous hits like Sweet Caroline, Song Sung Blue and Cracklin Rosie. The Universal Music Group announced Monday that it had acquired the stars entire songwriting catalog, as well as the rights to his recordings. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Diamonds work as a songwriter is particularly valuable, not only for his own recordings but for the many cover versions of his songs that have become hits by other artists, like Im a Believer by the Monkees, Red Red Wine by UB40 and Urge Overkills version of Girl, Youll Be a Woman Soon, on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantinos Pulp Fiction.
The 1977 song You Dont Bring Me Flowers, written by Diamond with Marilyn and Alan Bergman, had a notable double life. After Diamonds solo version, Barbra Streisand covered it in 1978, and radio DJs stitched together a duet from those two recordings; an official edit was released later that year and went to No. 1.
In 2018, Diamond announced that he had Parkinsons disease and was retiring from touring.
Universals deal for Diamonds recordings includes 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album and archival videos. The company will also release any new music that Diamond records, according to its announcement.
Like Universals recent acquisition of Stings songwriting and recording rights or Sonys deal for Springsteen the Diamond deal unites both sides of a top artist's work with a single company. The copyrights for recordings and songwriting, otherwise known as music publishing which cover the lyrics, melodies and basic structural elements of any composition are separate.
In a statement, Diamond praised Universals leaders, including CEO Lucian Grainge, and said he was confident that the company would continue to represent my catalog, and future releases with the same passion and integrity that have always fueled my career.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.