You missed your chance to buy the whole Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog for a cool $140 million
Music Features Red Hot Chili Peppers
Since we live in a capitalist society where people measure the value of their lives by the things they buy, we’ve all surely been in a situation where we missed out on purchasing something we really really wanted—whether it’s those evil Lil Nas X sneakers, the Uncut Gems Furby, or a letter from Stanley Kubrick to his assistant about the time he saw “a weirdo” outside his house. Unfortunately, we have all just missed our one chance to get a sweet deal on something similarly stupid, with Variety reporting that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have just sold off their entire catalog to song licensing company Hipgnosis for the low price of $140 million.
You probably would’ve had to put in a higher bid to get the songs for yourself, but even $141 million or so would be a great price to secure control of “Give It Away,” “Under The Bridge,” and hundreds of other songs about California. You could hoard them in a vault like a SoCal dragon, or license them to movies about surfing, or make some kind of jukebox musical about a guy named Anthony who likes to hang out in California with his friends while they wear socks over their dicks. But, alas, it’s too late now.
Variety says Hipgnosis has been on a buying spree lately, swallowing up the rights to catalogs from Timbaland, Chrissie Hynde, RZA, Blondie, Barry Manilow, Lindsey Buckingham, Shakira, Jimmy Iovine, and Neil Young (though only half of his songs). Imagine all of those being mashed-up for a jukebox musical about guys with socks on their dicks! It could’ve been you doing that!
56 Comments
Man, I expected AVClub to be far saltier in this article. Are they finally ready to admit they actually love this band?
I would rate “Under the Bridge” and “Californication” as significantly more worthy of snark than the innocuous “Don Jon”.
They’re one of those “better than their hits” bands. I’m pretty tired of Under the Bridge and never liked Dani California, but will always recommend other “deep” cuts at random strangers like Pretty Little Ditty and Venice Queen
This Velvet Glove is another hidden gem.
Nothing will ever encapsulate the true RHCP vibe more than “Abracabralifornia”http://rhcp2014.com/
The whole back end of that album I love so much more than the more popular hit-driven first half. Especially Porcelain, Velvet Glove, Savior and Road Trippin’
I’m just not a fan and I think Under the Bridge is one of the corniest songs of the 90s but yeah, they do have some great songs like “Behind the Sun”
That song is so different from their normal fare I initially thought it was from an entirely different band with the same name
I hate to play the predictable ‘their early stuff was better’ card, but their early stuff was better. Uplift Mofo… and Mother’s Milk are great records and there are some highlights from their first LPs. But Rick Rubin really did no favors; he turned down the funk and made them a pretty conventional rock band and they’ve never looked back.
Red Hot Minute is the best album and other than when it was released they havent played it in years. Or else i didnt see them play it in years..
Yeah they don’t play it because their usual guitarist wasn’t there, they worked with Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction. Their last two albums two were without John Frusciante, so they’re unlikely to play them going forward. But I do love that album, it’s very psychedelic and trippy compared to other albums
They fucking hate Navarro post album and initial tour for it is my understanding. They play stuff from other eras but wont ever play that album.. cowards!
One Hot Minute, but I agree. “Coffee Shop”>>>>>
You are correct 🙂
Uplift Mofo Party Plan was their high point. The first 4 albums are their best work.
I’ve been an RHCP fan for years, and even I’m not ready to admit it under my real name.
Same here, they might be my favorite band, but I also would never call them the best ever and can fully understand why people would not like them. They’d be significantly better without Anthony as lead singer, he’s the weak link musically, but he has also evolved and improved himself over the years.
Exactly! I think of them as being like U2: Inarguably great musicians, massively and seemingly permanently successful, but if you can’t jibe with the lead singer’s eccentricities, you’ll hate them with a passion. (and I just can’t with Bono, lol)
Something about him, I think it’s him popularizing the celebrity humanitarian, a thing people like Bill Gates exploit to gain more influence (though billionaires have always done this). He does so much to raise awareness while “seeming like such a huge piece of crap” as South Park put it.
It seems like this has been happening a lot lately – Dylan, Paul Simon, RHCP, and others all selling their entire catalogs within the past few months. Is there some reason for this that I missed hearing about? Like, I’d understand if this was something that happened often, and, say, every couple of years you’d hear about major (arguably generation-defining) artists signing $100M+ deals to license all of their music, but for so many to be doing so in such a short period seems odd unless there’s some additional factor compelling them (or compelling the companies to shell out ridiculous sums). Is it just me, or did I miss something?
It could just be that one artist does it, and a bunch of other artists of similar vintage see that and go “well shit, that much money? we could do that too.” And so every few years, we see a little wave of artists selling their catalogs for a bundle.
I got caught up in the rush and may have overspent. I like Pina Coladas but Rupert Holmes’ catalog wasn’t worth $125 mil.
i smiled quietly to myself when i thought you probably had to google who sung that song.
I don’t know about that. Just think about all the meat companies that would love to shell out to license “Timothy.”
The new tax proposals would mean they would pay higher taxes. Bob Dylan’s accountant told him the same thing, sell now.
Its probably something to do with the massive decline in physical sales for music, and I imagine as subscription streaming services become more prevalent individual digital sales of songs/albums are probably declining too. Licensing is always a good way to make $$$, with these deals instead of the band sitting back and waiting for a show/movie/commercial to license a song and inject some money randomly they can just take a nice big lump some at once, plan their retirement/investments/whatever so that if the t-shirt sales dry up and they want to stop touring they can remain super-rich.
I think it’s that plus concert revenue stopping abruptly, plus age (RHCP somehow precedes most hair metal bands in age)
They don’t make money selling records anymore.
It’s called cashing out. That’s it.
Hipgnosis has been really aggressive about courting artists and acquiring music in the past few months. The company—and its venture capital backers—figure that popular songs will always be a good investment if they can be pushed hard for licensing. Oddly enough, both The Guardian and the Your Favorite Band Sucks podcast have been talking about the dangers of the Hipgnosis approach lately.
A bunch of progressive minded people want to sell before their capital gains rate goes up. Let the other person pay that freight. Just like this site’s former version was set up in a tax haven.
I wouldn’t say I missed it, Bob.
If I had the money, I would have bought the rights and thrown them in a vault so nobody would have to be subjected to the shitty sound that is the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Yeah, but the actual band would still be around to inflict that sound on us.
Hipgnosis Songs Group, not to be conflated with the Hipgnosis designers responsible for Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and plenty of other iconic album covers.
Ok, that’s what I was about to ask.
Big whoop. I just paid $1.40 for Rockwell’s whole catalog.
what good is to “secure control” of their catalogue if I can’t make every copy of it disappear forever
This would be an awesome perk of being mega-rich; you could just buy the catalogues of bands you don’t like and refuse to license any of the songs under any circumstance. Imagine being able to turn on any radio station in any country and being 100% assured that you’d never hear the Foo Fighters or Red Hot Chili Peppers. That peace of mind would be totally worth a couple hundred mil.
Nah, I’m good. I’d prefer to stay out of The Bad Place
Man, talk about a gif never fitting so perfectly, but the thought of devoting any resources to the RHCP catalog…
Why couldn’t they just…GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW! GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW! GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW! GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY GIVEITAWAY NOW! “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ’What the fuck is this garbage? ‘ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”— Nick Cave
My girlfriend without the irony of knowing that quote said the same thing about Nick Cave.
Did every commentor here get bullied in high school in the early 90’s? The Chili Peppers are objectively great.
Actually, they just meant to sell Flea’s basslines. They threw in the band’s lyrics for an extra twenty bucks.
“…and hundreds of other songs about California.”
Still a little bummed out I missed my chance to buy The AV Club that time (and for far cheaper than this). I would’ve started by restaffing the Newswire department from the ground up!
Sucker, I downloaded it off bittorrent for free
so to be clear, the RHCP sold their publishing rights or all the master tapes? The Capitol/EMI era, plus the Warner Bros./Elektra era?Generations of black performers would love to have their master tapes and publishing rights back.
It appears to be the publishing rights.
Correction: They sold their entire catalog except for the Dave Navarro album Red Hot Minute. You can still buy that at a Sam Goody for $.99
To say Red Hot Chili Pepper songs are “about” anything is a pretty big stretch. They’re more like 3 minutes of complete nonsense that rhymes. They’re catchy tunes for sure, but I don’t know if they’ve ever had 2 lines in a row that made even a little bit of sense.
I just hope Frusciante was able to get a chunk for himself. I don’t know how the Chilis divvied up the credits (esp. with John bouncing in & out of the band over the course of decades) but JF gave them the soul that they needed to become a very, very big band. As overplayed as it is, BSSM is one of the best damned albums to come out of the 90s, full stop; essentially it’s a solid band with a million new ideas meeting up with Rick Rubin at his peak…you can’t lose with that combo. Frusciante is such an important part of that band, it would be a shame for him to be shut out because somebody thought lyrics like “We got large and we got small/We got a swimming pool and a cannon ball/We turn red and we turn green/It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen” was more deserving of the money.Now all I can think of is Anthony Kiedis using the money to buy a lot of black hair dye and mustache trimmers. Sad!
For that kind of money, they certainly didn’t just Give It Away did they?(Ow, let go! All right, all right, I’m going)
I’m disappointed that the AV Club (unlike the Guardian) failed to mention that Kid Creole and the Coconuts have also just sold their back catalogue. This was for an undisclosed fee, but I’m guessing may have come slightly cheaper than $140m. As Kid Creole admitted “Kid Creole has to look after his coconuts way into the future.”