By Mark Gray
6:00pm PST, Feb 18, 2024
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After years of negotiations, Sir Rod Stewart has sold his music catalog for $100 million, a new report claims.
The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the legendary singer struck a deal with Irving Azoff's entertainment rights management company, Iconic Artists. The entertainment company now owns Rod's entire publishing catalog and recorded music, as well as some name and likeness rights.
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Rod Stewart has been rather open about his plans to sell his catalog, having flirted with Hipgnosis Songs Fund for years about a purchase. However, he cut off negotiations with them in June 2023.
"This catalogue represents my life's work," Rod said. "And it became abundantly clear after much time and due diligence that this was not the right company to manage my song catalogue, career or legacy."
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Selling music catalogs has become quite common, as a slew of top-line artists have done so for big payouts in recent years including Paul Simon, David Guetta, Katy Perry, David Crosby and Stevie Nicks. Rod Stewart is now added to that list.
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Rod Stewart is hardly hurting for money. Prior to the sale of his catalog, he had an estimated net worth of about $300 million.
"Rod is incredible for a man his age and still has boundless energy but he's always been canny so it's no surprise that he's thinking about what happens when he can no longer perform," a source told Page Six of his decision to sell his catalog. "He also wants to make sure everyone is well looked after when he's no longer around, and he is also really thinking about how he ensures his legacy."
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Rod Stewart has been very generous with his money.
In January 2023, he phoned into a United Kingdom news program to criticize wait times patients have when trying to get medical scans. Rod then decided to pay for patient scans at his local hospital in Harlow, Essex, England, to speed up the process.
He then visited the the Princess Alexandra Hospital, where he'd paid for the scans, to "prove I'm not all mouth and trousers," he said, according to The Independent.
"If this is a big success, which I think it will be, I'd like to do it in Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and just keep it going, and hope some other people follow me," he added.
