Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie sells catalog rights to Hipgnosis

Christine McVie has joined Fleetwood Mac bandmate Linsey Buckingham in selling her catalog of music publishing rights to the Merck Mercuriadis-led group Hipgnosis Song Fund.

The deal includes every song McVie penned with the band and as a solo artist, including the classic hits 'Say You Love Me,' 'Little Lies,' 'Don’t Stop,' 'You Make Loving Fun,' 'Think About Me,' and 'Save Me'.

McVie said she was flattered to have her songs deemed worthy of merit in a recent statement. “I am so excited to belong to the Hipgnosis family," she said. “I’d like to thank you all for your faith in me, and I’ll do all I can to continue this new relationship and help in any way I can. Thank you so much!”

Whilst the full terms of the deal were not revealed, Hipgnosis have obtained the  “worldwide copyright, ownership, and financial interest, including writer’s share, of all compositions and neighboring rights” for 115 of McVie's songs.

“Christine McVie is one of the greatest songwriters of all time having guided Fleetwood Mac to almost 150 million albums sold and making them one of the best-selling bands of all time globally,” Mercuriadis said in a statement.

“In the last 46 years the band has had three distinct writers and vocalists but Christine’s importance is amply demonstrated by the fact that eight of the 16 songs on the band’s Greatest Hits albums are from Christine. It’s wonderful for us to welcome Christine to the Hipgnosis Family and particularly wonderful to reunite her once again at Hipgnosis with Lindsey Buckingham. Between Christine and Lindsey we now have 48 of 68 songs on the band’s most successful albums,” he said.

In 2020 Stevie Nicks sold 80 percent of her publishing rights to Hipgnosis's rival Primary Wave for $80 million. However, with the acquisition of both Buckingham and McVie’s catalogs, Hipgnosis now own the song copyright shares in six Fleetwood Mac albums; with seven of 11 songs on Fleetwood Mac, eight of 11 songs on Rumours, 15 of 20 songs on Tusk, nine of 12 songs on Mirage, nine of 12 songs on Tango In The Night and 12 of 17 songs on The Dance.

UK-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund has been unrelenting in recent years in acquiring the publishing rights and catalogs of some of music’s biggest artists, including a 50 percent stake in Neil Young’s massive catalog, 70 percent of Mark Ronson’s catalog, a $140 million deal for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog, the producing royalties of Jimmy Iovine and Bob Rock, and the acquisition of Big Deal Music Group, home to One Direction, Panic! at the Disco and Shawn Mendes.

“I’m not in the publishing business, I’m in the song-management business. There’s a paradigm that I’m a catalyst for changing, paradigms that have existed for decades and people think are OK and normal,” Mercuriadis said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

“We only buy directly from songwriters because I’m looking to empower songwriters and the songwriter community. The three big recorded-music companies use their leverage of owning the song companies to ensure those companies don’t advocate for songwriters, and they push the economic improvement we’ve seen with streaming so they, not the artist, get the lion’s share of the money at the songwriter’s expense. If nothing else, we’re a catalyst for changing that.”