Universal Music Publishing Group acquires Bob Dylan’s back catalogue

Universal Music Group (UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, has acquired Bob Dylan’s entire catalog of iconic songs by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG).

The deal – one of the most notable of its kind – covers 600 song copyrights including; “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Forever Young,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” “Tangled Up In Blue,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Make You Feel My Love,” and the Academy Award-winning “Things Have Changed.”

Dylan first burst into the public’s consciousness via New York City’s Greenwich Village folk music scene in the early 1960s, and has since notched up global record sales of 125 million. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 – the first songwriter to receive such a distinction – cited by the Swedish Academy “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Universal Music Publishing Group, under the leadership of both UMPG Chairman & CEO Jody Gerson and Universal Music Group’s Chairman and CEO, Sir Lucian Grainge has attracted some of the world’s most acclaimed and influential songwriters and their catalogs in recent years including; Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Bruce Springsteen, Bee Gees, Billie Eilish and Post Malone amongst others, becoming the partner of choice for many of the world’s most creative and successful songwriters.

Other talents and catalogs represented by UMPG include; Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Adele, ABBA, J Balvin, Coldplay, Beach Boys, Eminem, Irving Berlin. Leonard Bernstein, R.E.M., Justin Timberlake and Paul Simon.