A bunch of your dad's favorite songwriters have been selling off their songs.

Late last year Bob Dylan sold the rights to more than 600 of his songs to Universal

Music for an estimated 300 million dollars.

Shortly after that Neil Young sold 50% of the rights to his thousand plus songs to a British

investment firm, Stevie Nick sold off 80% of her publishing rights, Lindsey Buckingham,

went with 100% and just last week Paul Simon sold off his entire catalog to Sony.

COVID has probably expedited the thinking for a lot of these legends, tourings out,

merch is out, everyone's sitting at home streaming, which has dramatically increased

the value of back catalogs.

Instead of dying and having everyone come out of the word work to fight over the rights

to their music, Alop Prince, Aretha Franklin and Tom Petty, artists are caching out before

they did.

Call it an end of life planning.

But all the while one of the biggest singer songwriters working in popular music today,

maybe the biggest is doing something very different.

At what you could argue is the artistic peak of her career Taylor Swift is re-recording

her first six albums.

And she's doing it because she's in a very different place than the singer songwriters

of yours.

Taylor Swift doesn't own the rights to her first six albums.

But by re-recording them and convincing fans to listen to the new versions, she can

win back the rights to her music.

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