The Dylan catalog, a 60-year rock ‘n’ roll odyssey, is sold
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) — Bob Dylan has sold publishing rights to his catalog of more than 600 songs, one of the greatest treasures in popular music, to the Universal Music Publishing Group for an undisclosed sum.
The catalog includes such modern standards as “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” a body of work that may only be matched for its breadth and influence by the Beatles, whose songs were re-acquired by Paul McCartney in 2017.
The songwriting legend earned an estimated $300 million from the sale, according to The New York Times, which first reported it.
Dylan, 79, topped the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015 and the song “Like A Rolling Stone” was named by the magazine as the best ever written. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, the only songwriter to receive the award.