Kanye West Says He's $53 Million in 'Personal Debt'

[jono]

@Sion

How to Bail out Kanye West - the Bond Market

In 1997, with the help of investment banker David Pullman, Bowie created what are now known as “Bowie Bonds”—asset-backed securities comprising royalties on the musician’s back catalogue of 25 albums. Bowie received an upfront payment of $55 million by Prudential in exchange for the bond, that received an A3 grade from Moody’s, and paid an interest rate of 7.9 percent with an average life of 10 years, a greater return than a 10-year Treasury bond.

It was for $55 million—minus the money we paid the former manager for his minority interest to gain complete control of the masters,” he added. “Now that David owned 100 percent of his masters, we negotiated a deal with EMI for a 15-year license for a minimum $30 million in payments. Approximately 287 copyrights were in the deal for his first 25 albums, which were all gold. So it wasn’t any future albums, it was just his existing body of work—all his big hits.”

They’d structure it as follows: “We’re going to take all his performance income—from BMI, ASCAP, other societies—all the music that’s played on the radio, TV, cable, bars, movie theaters, nightclubs, etc. That’s a pretty large percentage for most artists, about 50 percent. We’re going to take the income stream on his record royalties—the mechanical royalties that are paid every time there’s a use of the song, like iTunes or every time a record is purchased. Then there are royalties from streaming, ringtones, and sheet folio music. There’s also synchronization income from the usage of his music in TV, film commercials and the like.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-the-bowie-bond-on-ye-s-53m-debt-problem.html

This makes me ill. I'm no fan of David Bowie but the fact someone else is cleaning up from his work is sickening. I understand he signed it over but still.

 

[MarcusGarvey]

@Sion

How to Bail out Kanye West - the Bond Market

In 1997, with the help of investment banker David Pullman, Bowie created what are now known as “Bowie Bonds”—asset-backed securities comprising royalties on the musician’s back catalogue of 25 albums. Bowie received an upfront payment of $55 million by Prudential in exchange for the bond, that received an A3 grade from Moody’s, and paid an interest rate of 7.9 percent with an average life of 10 years, a greater return than a 10-year Treasury bond.

It was for $55 million—minus the money we paid the former manager for his minority interest to gain complete control of the masters,” he added. “Now that David owned 100 percent of his masters, we negotiated a deal with EMI for a 15-year license for a minimum $30 million in payments. Approximately 287 copyrights were in the deal for his first 25 albums, which were all gold. So it wasn’t any future albums, it was just his existing body of work—all his big hits.”

They’d structure it as follows: “We’re going to take all his performance income—from BMI, ASCAP, other societies—all the music that’s played on the radio, TV, cable, bars, movie theaters, nightclubs, etc. That’s a pretty large percentage for most artists, about 50 percent. We’re going to take the income stream on his record royalties—the mechanical royalties that are paid every time there’s a use of the song, like iTunes or every time a record is purchased. Then there are royalties from streaming, ringtones, and sheet folio music. There’s also synchronization income from the usage of his music in TV, film commercials and the like.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-the-bowie-bond-on-ye-s-53m-debt-problem.html

This makes me ill. I'm no fan of David Bowie but the fact someone else is cleaning up from his work is sickening. I understand he signed it over but still.

Debt will do that. He was in deep $50m+

Seems like a win win