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ZZ Top, C’mon down. It’s your turn to play “Sell Your Catalog”

Gil Bang

By Gil Bang
in Music

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Bogeywon

Bogeywon 2536

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10 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

How the fuck is ZZ Top’s badass catalog worth only 1/10th the price for Bruce Springsteen’s portfolio of boring crap?

Best people suck that’s why. Probably a bunch of buckeyes and Sooners that go to see “THE boss”. Also the people who like Bruce probably like the free U2 album that got automatically put on your phone.

 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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While I prefer the music of ZZTop, I think the explanation is quite simply commercial licensing viability.  Springsteen songs are just more likely to end up in a Hulu series, or a commercial for how a regional bank brought back an entire community through lending, than a ZZTop song.  But a big driver of this shit are streaming series/original movies. 

They've managed now, due to enough scale and market examples, to figure out how much to pay in order to license out the tracks for lesser amounts for some YouTubeLive series or a theme song for a Tubi show or an original documentary on Peacock that needs its own background music.  Used to be you had a song on the 3 main channels or a major motion picture and that cost big bucks.  Then little by little, HBO needed some songs for a series, then AMC needed some cool hipster songs, then indie film needed a song, then a Netflix series needed albums full.  And voila, here we are...they are craving for all the soundtracks for all the video content they just accidentally invented in the last decade.  So they're not buying all these catalogs to sell off songs to Super Bowl ads for $5mm/pop.  It's for grinding away for lower checks, lower exposure, but a much longer game.  This isn't the old catalog days of selling off your masters to get repackaged for a new Boxed Set in time for Christmas.  This is to figure out ways to re-license to a dozen shows and a dozen commercials in the next quarter century.  In the meantime too, to make ends meet---they'll remaster it though for music streaming even though they'll barely do anything than run it through another filter and remix a fadeout drum fill and the diehards will still pay to download it.  I do it almost every week.  Music suckers like us are a different breed.  I'll laugh at the guy paying to download a holiday when all the while, I'm paying $10 on top of the $10 for the same album because I can hear one little, tiny difference in one of the tracks.  

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GhostOfTomJoad

GhostOfTomJoad 9407

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11 minutes ago, Lobo said:

While I prefer the music of ZZTop, I think the explanation is quite simply commercial licensing viability.  Springsteen songs are just more likely to end up in a Hulu series, or a commercial for how a regional bank brought back an entire community through lending, than a ZZ Top song.  But a big driver of this shit are streaming series/original movies. 

 

This, plus the fact that Springsteen has a huge catalog of songs that are covered widely by artists from multiple genres: rock, folk, country. He was also the sole owner of all of those songs which he essentially self-published. Those rights were already bringing him $17mm/year. I don't know how much ZZ Top's catalog was bringing them annually, or just how many songs they owned the exclusive rights to, but Billy and Frank (and Dusty's estate) wouldn't have sold if they didn't think they weren't getting the best deal possible.

I'd also suggest that ZZT's iconic sound both works for and against them. Artists like Bruce and Bob have a massive number of songs that are built heavily on rich, detailed lyrics and simple 3 chord progressions. This helps make them favorites for other artists to cover where they can put their unique stamp on a story/song that translates across all sorts of musical palates. But ZZT's Texas boogie blues sound is so definitive--you know exactly who you're listening to as soon as Billy and Dusty start playing--that it's a hard act for another group to cover. And as much as most of us love their songs, their lyrics aren't exactly the type of stuff creates a deep emotional impact. But that doesn't make it any better or worse. Their songs still kick ass.

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Al_4_ISU

Al_4_ISU 12521

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16 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

How the fuck is ZZ Top’s badass catalog worth only 1/10th the price for Bruce Springsteen’s portfolio of boring crap?

The post 1983 body of work is a big driver here.

ZZ Top and Springsteen started around the same time, but ZZ Top hit never made a great album after Eliminator.  In the time after Eliminator, Springsteen made his biggest album and a whole bunch of others that sold a fuck ton of copies, and he stayed closer to the zeitgeist or whatever.

I love both, and probably listen to ZZ Top a little more often these days, but I think Springsteen has a deeper catalog and produced "important" music over a longer period of time.

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GhostOfTomJoad

GhostOfTomJoad 9407

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14 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

For comparison, Motley Crue sold their catalog for $150M.

That's stunning to me. Nikki Sixx is the big winner there as he wrote the lion's share of their songs. But I guess a band will never go broke knowing that their hits will be spun by tittie bar DJs for the next 50 years.

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10556

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Here’s a breakdown how they value these deals

Quote

Looking at the ZZ Top catalog’s performance, Billboard estimates that the ZZ Top recorded masters catalog has averaged annually about $4.481 million in revenue over the last four years; and consequently, the band’s royalties from that are about $1.568 million. At a 20 times multiple that comes out to about $31.37 million valuation. Meanwhile, Billboard estimates that the band’s publishing comes out to about $1.262 million annually and the band’s share of that is about $950,000, which at a 25 times multiple would give that income stream a valuation of about $23.65 million. Overall, Billboard estimates the deal carries about a $55 million valuation.

 

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CooterBrown

CooterBrown 18056

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Let's start monetizing these sonic gems:
Shaped Dressed Man - end credit of Kingsman 5: He/Him/They
TV Dinner - Swanson's add scroll on Surlyhorns.com 
Pearl Necklace - Zales regional ad buy (Houston area)
Jesus Just Left Chicago - Illinois Satanic Temple recruiting video
Mexican Blackbird - ???
 

Tube Snake Boogie is always playing at South Austin’s mom’s house but I don’t think she pays royalties.
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dcar00

dcar00 14546

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On 12/22/2021 at 2:50 PM, jimmyjazz said:

I'm not sure I think Springsteen's catalog is almost 10X as valuable as ZZ Top's, but I can sort of understand it.

The idea that Motley Crue's catalog is almost 3X as valuable as ZZ Top's is rage inducing.

the reality is that zz top was that "little ol band from Texas" for a good while and they really only had one massive album. Springsteen became a global superstar.

that said.  zz top all the fucking way.

 

 

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