{"id":2198565,"date":"2025-12-14T13:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2198565"},"modified":"2025-12-14T13:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:29:00","slug":"the-weeknd-closes-catalog-partnership-with-lyric-said-to-be-1-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-weeknd-closes-catalog-partnership-with-lyric-said-to-be-1-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weeknd Closes Catalog Partnership With Lyric Said to Be $1 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tThe Weeknd<\/a> and Lyric Capital Group have closed a deal forming a business venture together wherein Lyric has invested in the artist\u2019s music catalog from inception through 2025, reps for the artist confirm to Variety.\u00a0<\/em>The deal sees the Weeknd<\/a> \u2014 real name: Abel Tesfaye \u2014 and his team maintaining creative control over the catalog and remaining shareholders and owners in the company.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rep notes that the joint venture is not a conventional catalog sale: \u201cFrom the beginning of the meeting, it was clear to all at Lyric that Abel would not sell his catalog. He wanted to be more innovative and creative in the way we established a partnership. To that end, through this venture, we constructed and launched a new business model with Abel and his iconic catalog whereby Abel and his team have the freedom to execute their creative vision with the entirety of his rights, both publishing and masters. This unique catalog deal sets a new standard for artist equity and control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe venture applies only toward the Weeknd\u2019s music masters and publishing through 2025 and does not include any future releases.\u00a0The Weeknd continues his partnership with XO\/Republic\/Universal Music Group; his publishing catalog has been and continues to be administered by Universal Music Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rep added that because the deal is not a conventional catalog purchase it is impossible to calculate a royalty multiple. However, Variety<\/em> sources and reports in Billboard<\/a> and Bloomberg<\/a> earlier this year stated that the assets were going for at least $1 billion based on about $55 million in net label and net publisher share, which implies an 18.2 times multiple. <\/p>\n

\n\tReps for the Weeknd and Lyric declined to confirm any numbers to Variety<\/em>, but if accurate, it is one of the biggest deals involving a single artist\u2019s catalog in history, let alone for a contemporary artist \u2014 the only larger publicly acknowledged single-artist deal was Sony Music\u2019s acquisition last year of the Queen catalog<\/a>, valued at $1.27 billion. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith more than 120 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, the Weeknd is one of the world\u2019s most popular recording artists<\/a>. His ongoing \u201cAfter Hours \u2018Til Dawn\u201d tour recently passed the $1 billion mark, setting a record for a solo male artist. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is no ABS or securitization deal here,\u201d the rep continued. \u201cLyric created a first-of-its-kind structure with direct input from Abel and his team, which includes a first-of-its-kind \u2018Royalty Backed Note\u2019 \u2014 produced by Lyric, ft. Partners Group \u2014 that drastically enhances the artist-friendly theme that underpins this partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI couldn\u2019t be more excited about what Lyric, Abel and team have created together,\u201d said Ross Cameron, Lyric founding \/ co-managing partner. \u201cFrom our first meeting, it was clear to me that we were sitting around the table with individuals that were going to change the way an artist thinks about his assets, music and legacy. The collaboration resulted in a first-of-its-kind partnership between an artist and Lyric, and we are beyond thrilled about this new venture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLyric strives to create artist-friendly structures and we believe this partnership demonstrates that at the highest level with the top artist in the world. I want to thank Abel and his team for putting their trust in Lyric,\u201d says Rich Garzia, Lyric co-managing partner.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalf of the Weeknd\u2019s publishing rights were already owned by Chord Music Partners, backed by Universal Music Group and Dundee Partners.<\/p>\n

\n\tLyric Capital invests in music royalties and also owns Spirit Music Group, which controls catalogs from Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean, Ingrid Michaelson and others.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety<\/em> will have more on this news as it develops. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Weeknd and Lyric Capital Group have closed a deal forming a business venture together wherein Lyric has invested in the artist\u2019s music catalog from inception through 2025, reps for the artist confirm to Variety.\u00a0The deal sees the Weeknd \u2014 real name: Abel Tesfaye \u2014 and his team maintaining creative control over the catalog and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2198566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[306354],"class_list":["post-2198565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-the-weeknd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/The-Weeknd-Closes-Catalog-Partnership-With-Lyric-Said-to-Be.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198567,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198565\/revisions\/2198567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2198566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}