You missed your chance to buy the whole Red Hot Chili Peppers catalog for a cool $140 million
Since we live in a capitalist society where people measure the value of their lives by the things they buy, we’ve all surely been in a situation where we missed out on purchasing something we really really wanted—whether it’s those evil Lil Nas X sneakers, the Uncut Gems Furby, or a letter from Stanley Kubrick to his assistant about the time he saw “a weirdo” outside his house. Unfortunately, we have all just missed our one chance to get a sweet deal on something similarly stupid, with Variety reporting that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have just sold off their entire catalog to song licensing company Hipgnosis for the low price of $140 million.
You probably would’ve had to put in a higher bid to get the songs for yourself, but even $141 million or so would be a great price to secure control of “Give It Away,” “Under The Bridge,” and hundreds of other songs about California. You could hoard them in a vault like a SoCal dragon, or license them to movies about surfing, or make some kind of jukebox musical about a guy named Anthony who likes to hang out in California with his friends while they wear socks over their dicks. But, alas, it’s too late now.
Variety says Hipgnosis has been on a buying spree lately, swallowing up the rights to catalogs from Timbaland, Chrissie Hynde, RZA, Blondie, Barry Manilow, Lindsey Buckingham, Shakira, Jimmy Iovine, and Neil Young (though only half of his songs). Imagine all of those being mashed-up for a jukebox musical about guys with socks on their dicks! It could’ve been you doing that!