Leonard Cohen Estate Sells Publishing Catalog

Hipgnosis Songs Fund—which also owns works from Lindsey Buckingham and Neil Young—purchased the catalog for an undisclosed sum
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, August 1967 (Jack Robinson/Getty Images)

Leonard Cohen’s estate has sold the entirety of his songwriting catalog—some 278 songs—to Hipgnosis Songs Fund for an undisclosed sum, Rolling Stone reports and Pitchfork can confirm.

The sale includes the “songwriter’s share” of 127 songs in Cohen’s Stranger Music catalog, which includes everything published from the start of his career through 2000—such as “Hallelujah” and “First We Take Manhattan”—as well as an additional 84 derivative works. The firm also acquired everything in his Old Ideas catalog, which includes the copyrights, “publisher’s share,” and “songwriter’s share” of every Cohen song written from 2001 until his death in 2016.

Hipgnosis was founded by former artist manager Merck Mercuriadis and Chic’s Nile Rodgers. The firm has acquired several major publishing catalogs from legacy artists, including Lindsey Buckingham (formerly of Fleetwood Mac), Jimmy Iovine, and Neil Young.

Read more about Hipgnosis in “What to Know About Music’s Copyright Gold Rush” on the Pitch.