THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."-John Milton
This has been a huge week to say the least regarding publishing acquisition. First there was Stevie Nicks who sold most of her publishing rights (and rights for her likeness and name….scary) for 100 million dollars, then Bob Dylan upped the ante by selling his publishing for 300 million dollars and now David Crosby is following suit, saying that selling his publishing is the only move he can make to stay afloat.
Buying and selling publishing has been going on for years. Whole publishing companies have existed because of the ownership of one hit song. Songs like Unchained Melody, Imagine, Billie Jean…these are blockbuster songs that just rake in the money quarterly. And for folks who want to nerd out on a great tale of publishing ownership, check out the youtube video of Paul McCartney talking about how he taught Michael Jackson about publishing just to have the one-gloved-wonder buy the rights to the Beatles catalog without consulting him (it really is worth a watch).
With the world closing, the live music industry shrinking and more “game” happening over the internet, owning a commodity like a song…that can be big business. It makes sense that business people want to own more of this commodity, making this a great time to sell your catalogues if that is something you want to do; it totally makes sense that these deals are going down and look for more to occur.
I think that while 300 million dollars seems to be—and is—a lot of money, the Dylan deal is much like George Lucas’ Star Wars deal: the money will be made back quicker than you might imagine and in a few years you could wonder why it wasn’t sold for more. Like A Rolling Stone just by itself could launch a publishing empire.
Chris Hillman's musical life from Byrds to Burritos and more
Chris Hillman quietly played in some of the greatest bands ever and some of the greatest albums of all time. Not a week goes by that I don’t listen to him, mostly his recordings with the Byrds and then some Flying Burrito Brothers in between. Now he has a new book documenting his career, including an excerpt published last month in the LA Weekly…
Maya Rudolph Takes Questions From 26 Famous Friends and Admirers
A great concept for an interview, featuring questions from Carrol Burnett, Tiffany Haddish, Sarah Silverman, Nick Kroll, Pee Wee Herman, Tina Fey and many more….
‘Rebuilding Notre-Dame is my reason for living. I must give her back to the world’
I am currently reading Notre Dame De Paris by Victor Hugo which we in America know as The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. The book is divided into ten books and interestingly enough, Notre Dame is more of a character than the Hunchback through the first half, as Hugo goes into detail about how its architecture has evolved over time. He had no way of knowing the more recent evolution via the recent fire. This article tells a great story of the next chapter in the rebuilding of Notre Dame.
Egyptian poet and prolific translator Refaat Sallam dead at 69
Refaat (or Rifaat) Sallam was a champion of Egyptian modernest poetry, being a poet himself, a publisher of several poetry magazines and a translator of great written work. He has one book of poetry (that I know of) in English called…Signals.
Kingdom
by Rifaat Sallam
Straw
by useless straw
I build my luxuriant nest
Over an abyss sky.
In vast space I stretch my limbs,
I wet my legs in a water to come
after a thousand other losses
and form myself a wing from stupor’s whistling.
A time I have to tame
a kingdom to try
a frenzied jump to empty banks.
