Can you imagine how much it costs to buy music from Mariah Carey? Record labels and companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars for control over an artist’s creative work. In exchange for a staggering amount of money or royalty payments, a company can use the art for however they see fit. Typically, it’s just their free will for marketing purposes. How can they extract even more money out of someone’s work?
For Mariah Carey, there’s no shortage of hits a company would salivate over in ownership. She essentially owns Christmas with the iconic “All I Want for Christmas is You”. “Fantasy”, “Always Be My Baby”, and “We Belong Together” are mammoth-sized records. Any company would back dozens of Brinks trucks to acquire the publishing rights for these songs.
Apparently, there was a time before the breakout fame in which Mariah nearly sold all of her publishing rights for a measly amount of money. When she spoke at Billboard’s Power 100 event and introduced their Executive of the Decade, Jody Gerson, she recalled a time when a company nearly took her for a ride. Ultimately, Carey argued that having someone like Gerson in her corner would’ve ensured that such exploitation would never be on the table in the first place.
Mariah Carey Nearly Sold Her Musical Future for $5,000
“I almost sold my publishing when I was 18 years old, for $5,000. We remember some of the songs in the catalog, right?” Carey asked the audience. “But I was just thinking: If I had someone like Jody there to protect me, it never would’ve gotten that far.”
Essentially, this meant that the people who bought her rights for $5k would own all of her greatest hits. All of her greatest hits for the price of a used car today. But Mariah Carey continued, noting that people like Jody Gerson create lanes for artists to thrive today.
“None of us would be in this room today if it weren’t for the transcendent power of one thing—a song. And no one I know is a fiercer protector of or advocate for songs and songwriters than the woman that I’m here to introduce,” Carey said. “Since she became chairman/CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group a decade ago, Jody Gerson has reigned not just as the most powerful woman in the music industry, but as one of the most influential executives in entertainment.”
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