Knowing their limited popular appeal, Dylan sold his first songs for a pittance, busking in hole-in-the wall dives in Greenwich Village so he could collect a share of the basket and cutting a deal with Lou Levy of Leeds Music Publishing for a meager advance. “I had just signed a contract with Leeds Music giving it the right to publish my songs, not that there was any great deal to hammer out,” Dylan recalls of his first deal. “I hadn’t written much. Lou advanced me a hundred dollars against future royalties to sign the paper and that was fine with me.”
Six decades later, Dylan has more than a 600 songs to his name—almost all of which, until recently, he owned. One of the few exceptions were those early songs knitted up by Leeds Music. But earlier this week The New York Times reported that Dylan had sold his entire catalogue lock-stock-and-barrel to Universal Music for an estimated $300 million. (The seven songs Dylan sold to Leeds Music had been purchased by Universal long ago in a separate deal).
The idea that one corporation could own all of Dylan’s work seems almost sacrilegious, as if Disney could possess the copyright on the Bible or you had to pay royalties to sing one of the traditional songs anthologized in the Child Ballads.
But it’s rank sentimentalism to ignore the fact that Dylan has always worked in the domain of commercial music—even as he stretched the definition of what commercial music is. Dylan has for decades been willing to license his songs for advertisements.
More importantly, when dealing with music as pervasively influential as Dylan’s catalogue, the whole idea of ownership is ambiguous. As Amanda Petrusich of The New Yorker notes, “Sixty years after his recording début, Dylan’s best-known and most resonant songs (‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’,’ ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’) are now so intensely and inextricably interwoven into the American experience that the question of ‘ownership’ almost seems moot.” She adds, “Universal may have secured certain legal and financial privileges when it comes to Dylan’s catalogue. But I’d venture that the songs belong to everyone who has claimed them.”
Dylan’s music has never belonged to Dylan alone. A company like Universal music desires Dylan’s catalogue not just because it expects there will continue to be an audience for his songs, but also because of the many other musicians who want to perform them.