One of the many books I have previously owned about Queen featured a profile of each member of the band. The UK publication (I’ll date it to the early 80s) remarkably listed each member of the band’s annual ‘wages’, at £100,000 each. Now £100k might have been a handsome salary in the 80s, though no doubt the figure was more nominal for tax related reasons. But compare it to Queen Productions annual revenues (circa £40m for the past few Companies House filings) and you can see how far Queen the band has come as a business.
Now Sony Music is spending £1 billion to acquire a substantial proportion of Queen Productions copyrights. Sony ATV publishing previously administered Queen, but Sony has never participated in the recorded music rights. Queen famously spent their entire recording career with EMI (the song “Let Me Entertain You” from Queen’s 1977 album, Jazz, about the music business, famously name checks the company: “With a lecture, down at EMI, we’ll show you where it’s at”). But after Terra Firma acquired EMI, Queen Productions took their recording rights elsewhere - to Universal. Not long after that came the first major Queen renaissance of the 21st century.
There was a long period (most of the 90s and a fair chunk of the 2000’s) when nobody really cared much for Queen’s music. It took a steady succession of re-releases (the first initiative by UMG was to release remastered versions of all of Queen’s albums in the “super-deluxe” CD jewel case), massive legacy tours, documentaries, a blockbuster movie, major syncs and social media phenomena (do not underestimate the power of those Freddie meems) to elevate Queen from outside the top 200 and into the top 40 most streamed bands in the world.
In the past few years that has dropped off a little from 27th in the world at the beginning of 2021. But that is only relative to those other huge artists on Spotify, most of them current, active global superstars. Queen’s monthly listeners are, still, steadily ascending on the streaming platform. By the end of 2021, Queen were notching up 47.3m Spotify monthly listeners, but today’s figure is 52.4m.
Queen Productions earnings also hit a peak a few years ago in 2018 at £73 million. So is £1 billion the right price? Especially since the deal excludes North American recording master rights (which remain with Disney).
Queen is an ‘uncorrelated’ earnings monster. All of the above mentioned phenomena has helped to grow Freddie Mercury’s legend and weave Queen’s music into the fabric of western culture across generations. For Gen Z and millennials, it’s the hit songs that remain irresistible (remember those Bohemian Rhapsody reaction videos on YouTube?). Boomers continue to absorb Queen without a drop of boredom. How could we ever get bored of songs like Don’t Stop Me Now or Somebody To Love?
The intriguing question, given that this is the biggest rights acquisition deal yet, is what upsides might lie ahead to reignite the band’s catalogue further? Sony Music is well positioned to exploit Queen’s repertoire better than anyone. Firstly, there is the Japanese connection (the band was huge in Japan but their revival in that market has been modest). Secondly, it could be argued that Sony pioneered the song economy in many ways through its work with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (though don’t expect the same with Queen’s effort “Thank God It’s Christmas” even if that song is underrated). Sony could well bring Queen more into the world of video games through its influence there too.
Part fun and part deadly serious (in character with the band in other words), here are 10 other ideas, some obvious and some not.
Queen the hologram tour. It had to be The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column (The Sun loved a good Freddie Mercury story) to tip the wink of a Queen Productions patent application already in play for “immersive 3D virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences”. After the success of ABBA Voyage and the forthcoming Kiss extravaganza, this simply has to happen at some point - though the current iteration with May, Taylor and Adam Lambert probably has to run its natural course first.
Queen The Musical 2.0. There is already a long-running (since 2002), enormously successful “jukebox” music call We Will Rock You. Written by Ben Elton, it was a triumph of popularity over critical opinion. It could do with a refresh. Times have changed considerably and so has Queen’s standing, as well as the theatre sector’s capability to deliver high concept musical productions. Brian May once said of Queen that “I don’t think we end up being less musical because we get involved in the theatrics”. A more inclusive and modern interpretation of the Queen story wrapped up in theatrics can’t lose. And, successful musicals can make a lot more money than tours.
The real Freddie Mercury biopic. The 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody movie was a major success, but every fan knows how compromised and glossed-over it was compared to the film that was previously in the works. Sacha Baron Cohen wanted to play Mercury desperately but that won’t happen now. I would cast the Netflix series Narcos actor Diego Luna, before he gets too old. Let’s have the biopic Freddie deserves.
AI-enhanced concert footage/films. This is the age of bumper live tours like never before. While the hologram tour is in the works, consider that Freddie Mercury was the world’s greatest rock & roll frontman, ever. After Live Aid in 1985 (where Freddie’s performance became not only pop culture legend but the subject of numerous academic papers) Queen’s concerts were widely filmed. A “Moonage Daydream” style film seems possible but with Freddie the subject, its appeal could be even more powerful.
Queen & Robbie Williams. Don’t laugh. Adam Lambert wasn’t exactly anyone’s obvious choice for a singer that would have worked on such a commercially successful scale. And Paul Rogers you have probably forgotten about despite his success as Queen’s singer 2004-2009. Robbie might not have Freddie’s vocal range but he does have his own brand of acutely British eccentric showmanship. If he knuckled down to it, it could work. The USA isn’t interested in Queen (so no worries about those US recording rights) or Robbie, but Brits and swathes of others around the world would lap it up. And we could get not one but two rollicking renditions of “Let Me Entertain You”.
Queen Reconstructed talent show. Tribute bands have done well out of the catalogue resurgence, and Queen has more tribute bands than any other rock group. Imagine a nationwide talent show where each member was recruited and then a brand new Queen tribute band is created from it. Over the opening and first four episodes the members are recruited and the series then follows their process of rehearsal and hitting the road. Would be fun for all generations of Queen fans.
“New” lost recordings with proper, endorsed AI. Again, it is inevitable that it will be attempted. I suspect that 2022’s emotional single release ‘Face It Alone’ used an assisted AI on Freddie’s voice (if so, it was incredibly well done). There isn’t an archive anything like Bowie or Prince, but you feel there must be lost tapes that might provide the stems to a handful of new recordings - enough to kindle the flames for yet another Queen catalogue resurgence? Can’t hurt.
Queen The Community. A Queen fan community and archive seems like an overdue idea, especially for the exploitation of image and naming rights. The current Queen online store is a pretty basic D2C shop, with very little by way of experiences, no rare materials or exclusives and no storytelling. Retreats, conferences, products and experiences for the rabid fanbase could become the exemplary experience for a legacy band. Def Leppard, Neil Young and others have paved the way. Working with Pophouse might be on the cards here.
Queen neo-classical remasters. In a world of lean back, focus and study “functional” music, why not bring a touch of class to background listening with Max Richter or Ólafur Arnalds (or, Hans Zimmer) placed in charge of an Abbey Road new recordings project to set the neo-classical world alight. And then, tour it, of course.
Dragon Attack. About one in 10 Queen fans (surely a valid statistic) know that ‘Dragon Attack’ is one of, if not the best Queen song, ever. Like most catalogue legends enjoying a digital renaissance, Queen’s streaming numbers are loaded towards the band’s ‘Greatest Hits’. Yet each and every one of Queen’s studio albums will have a section of the Queen army rooting for it as their best (okay perhaps not 1982’s Hot Space, but all of the others). The UMG remastered series contained two ‘Deep Cuts’ compilations, but so much more could be done with Queen’s eccentric and outrageously eclectic, album tracks. Put Dragon Attack into a blockbuster game or the right scene in a movie and watch it blow.
If commerce follows culture, then I would imagine there is much more upside to come from Queen’s creations. One front page article in The Sun in the 1980s had Freddie Mercury claiming “I’m rolling in money”. If only he would have lived on to see the true monetary value of what he and his band created. It might even be beyond Freddie’s imagination.