Freddie Mercury’s ‘wife’ is reportedly set to score another multi-million pound windfall following the record-breaking £1bn sale of Queen’s back catalogue.
Mary, 73, was the woman who won the heart of rock legend Freddie Mercury and has been the beneficiary of his fortune since his death in 1991.
According SunMary will now receive £187.5 million after the deal with Sony is signed, having previously received half of Freddie’s estate and a further 25 per cent when her parents died.
The London native also receives 18.75 percent of the revenue from Queen Productions, which controls the catalog and pays surviving members Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Brian May, the publication’s journalists.
Mary is not in regular contact with her bandmates, but is one of the trustees of a charity set up in Freddie’s honour, the Mercury Phoenix Trust.
Freddie Mercury’s ‘wife’ will score another multi-million pound windfall following record-breaking sale of Queen’s backlog to Sony for £1bn (pictured in 2002)
Mary, 73, was the woman who won the heart of rock legend Freddie and has been the beneficiary of his fortune since his death in 1991 (pictured in 1984)
It has been reported that after receiving the payment, Mary will enter the Top 100 richest women in Britain.
Mary and Freddie first met in 1970, when he was a young aspiring musician who had moved to London six years earlier from his home country of Zanzibar.
The former couple moved in together and became engaged in 1973, but three years later Freddie confessed that he was gay.
In a rare interview, Mary recalled: “He said, ‘I think I’m bisexual.’ I said, ‘I think you’re gay.’ And nothing else was said. We just hugged.’ Mary and Freddie remained close friends throughout their lives.
Queen have reportedly sold their iconic back catalogue of hits for a whopping £1bn following a bidding war.
According Sun The surviving members of the band and Freddie’s estate agreed the sale with Sony Music, more than doubling the record set by Bruce Springsteen, who sold the rights to his music for £393m in 2021.
The publication reports that Sony will now own all of the band’s hits, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now and I Want To Break Free.
But unlike Springsteen and Bob Dylan, who sold his own catalogue for £315m, the band will retain the rights to perform their music live.
Founding members Brian May, 75, and Roger Taylor, 74, continue to tour live with Adam Lambert, 42, as their new frontman following Freddie’s death in 1991.
Mary and Freddie first met in 1970, when he was a young aspiring musician who had moved to London six years earlier from his native Zanzibar (pictured in 1986).
Queen are said to have sold their iconic catalog of hits for a whopping £1bn after a bidding war (LR Roger Taylor, John Deacon, Freddie Mercury and Brian May)
The surviving members of the band and Freddie Mercury’s estate have reportedly agreed to the sale with Sony Music, more than doubling the record set by Bruce Springsteen, who sold the rights to his music for £393m in 2021 Freddie in 1979)
While bassist John Deacon, 72, retired from music in 1997.
The deal is also said to include merchandise revenue, cash generated by the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and any other future projects and licensing deals. MailOnline has contacted the band’s representatives for comment.
Springsteen’s deal was signed before a host of other artists, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Justin Bieber, also pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from their own collections.
But the market has cooled since then and some major investors have devalued their song collections by as much as 14 percent.
Disney Music Group owns the rights to Queen’s music in North America, but the band retains ownership of global rights through UK-based Queen Productions Ltd, which earned £39m in royalties in 2021.
Investors view music catalogs as holding shares in companies that pay dividends. The £1bn valuation of Queen’s catalog is based on the annual returns an investor can expect over the next few decades.
Prior to the reports, Guy Blake, a leading music industry lawyer who has worked on catalog acquisitions, told DailyMail.com earlier this year that the deal with Queen would be “seismic”.
“Overall, I don’t see any problem with this figure ($1.2 billion) being accurate; I think there’s probably some truth to it,” said Blake, managing partner at Granderson Des Rochers.
Sony is now said to own all of the band’s hits, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now and I Want To Break Free (pictured in 1984).
Springsteen’s 2021 deal was signed before a host of other artists, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Justin Bieber, also pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars for their own collections.
But unlike Springsteen and Bob Dylan (pictured), who sold their own catalog for £315 million, the band will retain the rights to perform their music live.
Founding members Brian May, 75, and Roger Taylor, 74, continue to tour live with Adam Lambert, 42, as their new frontman (pictured) following Freddie’s death in 1991.
“There aren’t many catalogues like Queen,” he said.
In the streaming era, catalog valuations also rely heavily on a metric called “album consumption units,” which combines streams and downloads to estimate what the equivalent number of album sales would be. One album sale equates to roughly 1,500 song streams, according to industry standards.
Queen’s U.S. album sales totaled 25.9 million between 1991 and 2017 and then rose to 3.58 million in 2019 following the release of the Bohemian Rhapsody film, according to Luminate figures reported by Billboard.
The popularity of the film and the continued airplay of Queen’s hits decades after its release have helped the band gain a legion of young fans, which has also increased the value of their back catalogue.
‘Queen has found a much younger audience. And that’s unique to a legacy catalog, Blake said.
“I don’t know if there are many rock bands that can say they’ve had the popularity among people under 30 that Queen has right now. There’s a uniqueness to a lot of their songs that keeps them coming back again and again, generation after generation.” generation”.