Christine McVie Sells The Rights To Her Songs To Hipgnosis
Christine McVie has sold the rights to 115 of her songs – including some of Fleetwood Mac‘s biggest hits – to Hipgnosis for an undisclosed sum.
“Christine McVie is one of the greatest songwriters of all time having guided Fleetwood Mac to almost 150 million albums sold and making them one of the best-selling bands of all time globally. In the last 46 years the band have had three distinct writers and vocalists but Christine’s importance is amply demonstrated by the fact that eight of the 16 songs on the band’s Greatest Hits albums are from Christine,” said Merck Mercuriadis, the founder and chief executive of Hipgnosis and former manager of artists including Elton John, Iron Maiden and Beyoncé.
In January, Hipgnosis – the London-listed company that gives investors the chance to cash in on the royalties from evergreen hits – acquired the ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s 161-song catalogue, which includes hits such as Go Your Own Way, Second-Hand News and Tusk.
Hipgnosis, which has spent more than $2bn (£1.4bn) buying the rights to hits by artists from Beyoncé to Neil Young, said that it now owns the rights to 48 of 68 songs on Fleetwood Mac’s most successful albums.“I am so excited to belong to the Hipgnosis family, and thrilled that you all regard my songs worthy of merit. I’d like to thank you all for your faith in me, and I’ll do all I can to continue this new relationship and help in any way I can! Thank you so much!” said McVie in a statement.
Hipgnosis have published financial figures showing that McVie’s share of the royalties made by her song catalogue totalled $1.7m last year. McVie’s top five revenue-generating songs, all originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop, Everywhere, You Make Loving Fun, Songbird and Little Lies – accounted for 81% of the total revenues.
This year Hipgnosis, which has a market value of £1.4bn, has raised £150m to continue to purchase the song rights of classic artists and now values its entire catalogue of 65,000 songs at $2.2bn.