What does it mean to sell your music catalogue? Justin Bieber earns $200 million from selling rights

As Justin Bieber becomes $200 million richer due to selling his entire catalogue of music from the past 14 years, fans are left wondering, in Bieber’s own words - What Do You Mean?

The Canadian singer, who is one of the world’s best-selling music artists of all time with estimated sales of over 150 million records worldwide, sold the rights to Hipgnosis Songs Capital.

As a result of the reported £162 million sale, any time one of Bieber’s songs are played, Hipgnosis will now earn the royalties from the portion of the music they own.

Justin’s move follows in the footsteps of Justin Timberlake and Shakira who have also given a percentage to Hipgnosis in the past couple of years, but the 28-year-old performer acquired the largest sum so far.

"This acquisition ranks among the biggest deals ever made for an artist under the age of 70,” said Hipgnosis founder Merck Mercuriadis, “such is the power of this incredible catalogue that has almost 82 million monthly listeners and over 30 billion streams on Spotify alone.

Despite the company’s name sounding like they hypnotised Justin into giving them the rights to 290 of his titles including his most recent album, Justice (2021), the ‘Sorry’ singer and his manager Scott Braun painted it out as a move for financial benefit.

Braun told Billboard that the Hipgnosis deal was made to ‘preserve and and grow this amazing legacy’ that Justin has created since he first entered the music industry in 2009 with the song ‘One Time’.

This reasoning could have some weight to it as it was discovered that although the British song management company have purchased Justin’s publishing rights and artist royalties, they have not obtained the master records as they still belong to the Universal Music Group.

Fans may have been relieved to hear this, as some were left questioning whether $200 million was enough money for Justin’s entire collection, as other artists have accumulated more including Bruce Springsteen who earned $500 million in 2021.

A ‘Belieber’ voiced their thoughts on Twitter stating that Justin only owns 20% of his work so it is worth more than the current ‘meagre’ price tag, before stating:

“Justin doesn’t even own his masters yet. My man just sold his little percentage and got more money for it and now will be able to actually market his music for more revenue! Oh father is so smart.”