Legend David Bowie guarantees perpetual exploitation

In honour of David Bowie's 75th birthday on 8 January 2022, the long-awaited album "TOY" will be released on 6×10-inch vinyl, cassettes and a 3 CD set a day before. In fact, this previously unheard album is part of the Brilliant Adventure boxset, which fans have been able to buy for 150 euros since November 2021. Is this a long-awaited sign from the afterlife, or a commercial masterstroke?

The songs of artistic and musical legend David Bowie found their way into NPO Radio 2's Top 2000 no less than 18 times. Heroes (1977) was at number 24, and has been a staple of that ranking since 1999.

His first real hit, Space Oddity (1969), followed at number 119. The song about stranded astronaut Major Tom was used by the BBC for the Apollo moon landings the same year. This helped launch the glam rocker's career. His other personas Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke and Aladdin Sane followed later.

220 million

The last time Bowie performed was in the early 2000s. He looked sleek and neat like a Nietzschean Übermensch. Until he suddenly dropped off the radar in 2006. In 2014, he was found to have liver cancer. He died at the age of 69, two days after the release of his last album Blackstar on 10 January 2016. Bowie sold an estimated 136 million albums in less than 50 years.

With his death, his music career did not end. Recently, on 3 January, music label Warner Chappell Music (WCM) reported that they have bought Bowie's entire oeuvre from the David Bowie Estate for 220 million euros. Guy Moot, CEO of WCM said of the transfer, "His songs are milestones that changed the course of modern music forever. We look forward to building on the legacy of this great artist."

Surprise liquorice

Toy was recorded after Bowie's triumphant Glastonbury 2000 performance. Bowie went into the studio with his bandmates, Mark Plati, Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer and Emm Gryner, to put a new spin on songs that had been recorded between 1964 and 1971. David planned to record the album 'old school' with a live band, choose the best takes and then release it in a remarkably prescient manner as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the concept of the 'surprise drop' album release and the technology to support it did not exist in 2001. This made it impossible to release Toy as soon as David wanted. In the meantime, David did what he did best; he moved on to something new.

Twenty years after its originally planned release, guitarist cum producer Plati said of the album, "Toy is a snapshot of joy, fire and energy, giving us a glimpse into the trenches of David's art-rock period."

Mix of all

Legacy artists who are nearing the end of their careers or who have already passed away often experience a "facelift," not only on streaming media like Spotify but also on turntables. For example, Jerome Soligny, author of 'David Bowie: Rainbox Man' (2020) wrote of the album Toy: "It is a tribute to unknown songs from his early music days as well as more famous songs from the 60s/70s. And besides that, it's the disconnect between Hours (1999) and Heathen (2002). You can clearly hear that in his baritone voice. Fans have been waiting for this."

The album is a mishmash, with ramshackle original versions turned into slick rock tracks like "I Dig Everything" or banging mod tracks like "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" and "Baby Loves That Way". In many cases, however, the original versions sound more avant-garde than the remakes.

Pierrot

Toy ends with a new track from which the album takes its title. 'Toy (Your Turn To Drive)' is built from a jam that was recorded at the end of one of the live takes of 'I Dig Everything'. Plati said, "Since the song was taken from 'I Dig Everything', it makes sense to end the album with this song - it's also a fitting postscript to the Toy era with David's band".

During his lifetime, Bowie was no slouch commercially and managed to boost his star image by starring in various commercials, TV spots and music videos. For instance, he featured in the Louis Vuitton, Pepsi and XM Radio commercials where he performed in his personas Pierrot, Halloween Jack and The Soul Man, also during his tours and music videos.

The fish is paid dearly

The release of Toy, along with Rolling Live Studios and Mike Garson's acclaimed A Bowie Celebration event on Bowie's birthday, will ensure that the enigma David Bowie does not fall into oblivion. Commercial times à la the 1980s are being revived, with turntables and cassette recorders to be called in to listen to Bowie's collectors' items.

The deal between the David Bowie Estate and WCM is the latest in a series of major takeovers by various companies of pop artists' catalogues, with Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and several members of Fleetwood Mac selling the rights to their hits for large sums of money.

20 times the value

"The publishing deal market for music publishers is booming," says Mark Mulligan, analyst at MIDiA Research. "There has never been a better time, there may never have been a better time for a hit artist from the 70s, 80s and 90s to sell their rights. These deals are being done at 17, 18, 19, 20 times value."

This peak has been described as gold rush, with investors seeking the increasingly valuable returns from timeless hits. Rights to old songs generate royalties when they are played on radio, sold on CD or vinyl, covered by another artist or licensed for TV shows, commercials or films.

Investors

While Bob Dylan's pay days are well past, he earned a sloppy 265 million euros selling 600 songs to Universal Studios. Dolly Parton said a few days later he wanted to do the same, while singer-songwriter David Crosby claimed he was forced out. Just last year, Neil Young sold half of his songs to Hignosis Songs Fund. This investment company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. The economic side of music seems to be redefining itself with investors rather than artists taking over. This lucrative revenue stream could change the music industry forever.

It is a gamble for the music and financial industry to just buy or sell an artist's entire repertoire. Especially in times of epidemics and economic upheavals. But this shift comes as no surprise. Old music is in, record spinning is hip. In the UK in 2020, the most played vinyl album was Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, which was bought over 30,000 in the same year. The album is 45 years old.

Mainstream media

It is also royalty income from streaming boom Spotify that has caught the attention of investors and fuelled the buying frenzy of artists' back-catalogues. For instance, the annual royalty income from Bon Jovi's 34-year-old hit Livin' on A Prayer has increased by 153% since 2013. By 2021, the song covered 77 per cent of the UK music market, worth €1.6 billion.

The normal singer-songwriter only earns 1 euro when more than 250 listeners have listened to a song for more than 30 seconds. Mercury-Prize-nominated artist Nadine Shah, for example, argued in a speech to a committee of UK MPs that despite her success, she earns so little from streaming that she struggles to pay her rent. Another female artist, Fiona Bevan, known for composing and singing Kylie Minogue's No 1 album, told the same committee that she receives only 100 euros in streaming royalties from her work on this record.

Rediscoveries

Exploitation of old musical works or artists is thus mostly for the big names. Labels like WCM cannot resist the lure of making money out of old-school archives and putting artists like David Bowie in new commercial jackets. It is not an unknown phenomenon; for instance, just last months, "an interesting puzzle piece" was found in the Beatles' narrative and Elton John collaborated with pop artist Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran and Lil Nas X.

But not everyone is after money. The director of the Beatles Liverpool Museum, Paul Parry, decided to give all the money earned from the unknown Beatles song to charity. The 1970 song Radhe Shaam features Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and guitarist George Harrison along with Indian singer Aashish Khan ánd legend Eric Clapton.

Timeless

The transfer of copyrights from David Bowie's Estate to WCM includes his 1981 collaboration with Queen on 'Under Pressure' and the albums "Heroes", "Changes", "Space Oddity", plus the posthumously released studio album 'Toy', which will be released thus Saturday, 8 January 2022. The album is only two-thirds known to the public.

The new songs that can be listened to on the album TOY will most likely not cause a major revival of David Bowie. Bowie, like many others, is a timeless presence. He is impossible to imagine our current music scene without him. When the occasional new piece of the puzzle is added to this legend, the public is reminded of his enormous body of work. Thus, financial interest in Bowie also bubbles up again.

He will be heard in the top 2000 for years to come, and exploited.