{"id":805848,"date":"2020-03-30T13:13:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=975148"},"modified":"2020-03-30T13:13:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:13:15","slug":"bon-jovis-richie-sambora-is-the-latest-victory-for-merck-mercuriadis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/bon-jovis-richie-sambora-is-the-latest-victory-for-merck-mercuriadis\/","title":{"rendered":"Bon Jovi\u2019s Richie Sambora Is the Latest Victory for Merck Mercuriadis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Richie Sambora<\/a> is selling the rights to his nearly 200-song catalog to song acquisition investment company Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Hipgnosis announced on Monday.<\/p>\n

Financial details between the company and the former Bon Jovi<\/a> guitarist weren\u2019t specified, but given Merck Mercuriadis<\/a>\u2019s reputation to overpay for his acquisitions<\/a> and the number of hits Sambora co-wrote, it\u2019s safe to assume Sambora is walking away with a hefty paycheck. Still, the real winner here is music-manager-turned-investor Mercuriadis, who just added \u201cLivin\u2019 on a Prayer,\u201d \u201cYou Give Love a Bad Name\u201d and \u201cWanted Dead or Alive\u201d to an already extensive list of hits he\u2019d acquired since his company Hipgnosis hit the London Stock Exchange in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>In uncertain times such as this you are reminded of the power of great songs and great music, and amongst the greatest set of songs of the last 35 years are the incomparable songs Richie Sambora co-wrote for Bon Jovi and other great artists,\u201d Mercuriadis said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hipgnosis puts a financial valuation on songs\u2019 potential longterm royalties<\/a>. As the music industry<\/a> ushered in a new era focused around streaming rather than physical sales and digital downloads, artists and songwriters have faced more questions about their revenues. When songwriters agree to sell to companies like Hipgnosis, they agree to a more immediate payout rather than rolling the dice on future royalties on their own. Song acquisition companies take on that bet; the bigger the song, the more likely the returns.<\/p>\n

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A quick look through Mercuriadis\u2019s shopping spree shows a clear reasoning to his acquisitions: he wants big, timeless hits whose intellectual property he can leverage beyond streaming to other mass media. And with prominent features  in every drunken karaoke night as well as a slate of video games, TV shows and movies, Sambora\u2019s co-written Bon Jovi tunes fit that bill. The songs are still of course popular for traditional listening too. Bon Jovi is one of the top selling rock bands of all time. Single \u201cWanted Dead Or Alive\u201d went quadruple platinum back in February 2015, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and \u201cIt\u2019s My Life\u201d went double platinum a few months later. Bon Jovi remains one of the mainstays of classic rock radio, and as of publication the band had over 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Sambora left the group in 2013 but performed with the band for its Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2018.<\/a> He and Jon Bon Jovi were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009.<\/p>\n

Sambora\u2019s catalog is the highest profile purchase in Hipgnosis\u2019s already busy 2020. In January, Mercuriadis and co. bought catalogues from songwriter Ammar Malik and producer Emile Haynie, who have writing credits on major hit songs including \u201cMoves Like Jagger\u201d and \u201cPayphone\u201d by Maroon 5 and \u201cRunaway\u201d by Kanye West. Hipgnosis also bought out the copyrights on Blink 182 co-founder Tom DeLonge\u2019s catalog, giving access to \u201cAll The Small Things\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s My Age Again?,\u201d among others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese songs are very important to me and I feel very strongly that Merck is the only person I could have entrusted my babies to,\u201d Sambora said in a statement. \u201cI believe the work he is doing that has transformed the way that the world looks at the power of great songs and the songwriting community is very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercuriadis has an army of songs in a time where catalog acquisition is on the up and up. And if industry chatter is any indicator, Mercuriadis\u2019s catalog will only continue to grow. According to Hipgnosis\u2019s most recent public filing, which cut off at September 2019, the company\u2019s portfolio consisted of 11,225 songs. As Hipgnosis keeps buying up, the music industry will do doubt keep an observant eye on the success of its longterm catalog-ownership play \u2014 especially in a time of economic freefall due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richie Sambora is selling the rights to his nearly 200-song catalog to song acquisition investment company Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Hipgnosis announced on Monday. Financial details between the company and the former Bon Jovi guitarist weren\u2019t specified, but given Merck Mercuriadis\u2019s reputation to overpay for his acquisitions and the number of hits Sambora co-wrote, it\u2019s safe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 20:34:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}