Bob Dylan’s six decades of songwriting have produced what is probably the most celebrated back catalog in American musical history. Now, it’s reportedly become the most expensive, too. According to TheNew York Times, the Nobel Prize winner has offloaded his entire songwriting catalog in a deal estimated to have come in at more than $300 million. On Monday, the Universal Music Publishing Group announced that it had bought Dylan’s entire canon from his 1960s classics right up to his latest album, this year’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. Jody Gerson, chief executive of Universal’s publishing division, said: “To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all time—whose cultural importance can’t be overstated—is both a privilege and a responsibility.” To no one’s surprise, the famously enigmatic Dylan has not commented.
