Producer Bob Rock has become the latest in a string of high-profile music figures to strike lucrative deals in the sale of music rights.
In a press release, U.K.-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited announced they acquired Rock’s producer rights to 43 songs which include Metallica’s self-titled 1991 album (aka: “The Black Album”) and various Michael Bublé songs.
While Hipgnosis did not disclose the amount of this deal, Metal Hammer referred to this transaction as a “multi-million dollar deal.”
Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited founder Merck Mercuriadis said in a statement, “The breadth of Bob Rock’s enormous successes are almost impossible to match by any creator in the history of music. From Metallica’s most famous ‘Black Album’ to Michael Bublé’s ‘Christmas’, he has produced some of the biggest albums of all time that continue to be evergreen, year in and year out.”
Rock said in his own statement, “I put my heart and soul into these recordings. I know how much Merck loves music, so it was an easy deal to put together.
While Rock receives a lot of credit for his work on Metallica, Rock made headlines in May 2020 saying he wasn’t sold on the album’s classic single “Enter Sandman right away. He said, “I remember Lars [Ulrich] saying, ‘Well, Sandman is the single.’ And I’m going, ‘What?’ To me it was like, I didn’t get it yet. Because all the lyrics weren’t there. I was thinking ‘Holier Than Thou, ‘only because that kind of energy was up-tempo and that kind of works for me. What do I know? It ended up being Sandman, obviously a good choice.”
To date, Metallica has moved over 16 million units in the United States alone.
