In the two days following Sly Stone‘s death on June 9, streams for the Sly & the Family Stone catalog skyrocketed a whopping 685% compared to the stream count on June 8, the day prior to his passing — though his estate won’t reap all of those royalties, as Stone sold off a good chunk of his music intellectual property rights to music asset investors.
The Michael Jackson estate, which acquired Stone’s publishing catalog back in the 1980s, cemented its global ownership in a 2019 deal that saw it acquire a majority interest in songs eligible for revision/termination rights for Sly & the Family Stone’s catalog in the U.S. At the time, sources suggested that deal left Stone with an undisclosed minority stake in his publishing catalog.
For the Jackson estate, the 2019 deal allowed it to retain ownership of Stone’s songs — for which Stone had begun filing copyright termination notices in anticipation of his U.S. publishing rights coming up for reversion — beginning in 2024. (U.S. Copyright law allows creators of music released beginning in 1978 to file termination notices and regain U.S. ownership of their songs and/or masters after a 35-year period, while music recorded before 1978, like most of the Stone catalog, is eligible after a 56-year term.) Notably, if Stone had followed through on those termination notices and not sold the U.S. rights, the Jackson estate would still have owned Stone’s publishing rights outside the U.S. — although there’s currently a court case challenging that interpretation of copyright law.
Subsequent to all that, the Jackson estate sold 50% of most of Jackson’s recorded music assets to Sony Music, in a deal that included the Stone catalog. Meanwhile, the writer’s share of Stone’s songs was acquired by Primary Wave in 2018.
Sly & the Family Stone’s sales and streaming activity was meager in the days preceding Stone’s death, with hardly any album sales and averaging some 217,000 daily on-demand streams. But from June 9 through June 15, album consumption units increased to more than 1,000 units daily, or a 505.7% increase. Within that, on-demand streams jumped to 901,000, a 314.3% increase, according to preliminary Luminate data.
Looking at the band’s numbers on a weekly basis, in the six weeks before the week of his death, the catalog averaged less than 2,000 album consumption units a week, but in the week of his deal and the following week, his catalog activity averaged nearly 7,000 album consumption units, or an increase of 316.6%. Meanwhile, streams increased from an average of about 1.47 million streams per week in the six weeks prior to his death to an average of 4.9 million on demand streams, up 231%, for the week of his death and the subsequent week ending June 19.
Sly & the Family Stone’s catalog has averaged about 68,000 album consumption units annually over the last three years in the U.S. Within that, it averages about 73 million streams annually, while global streams, including the U.S., come in at about 136 million, according to Luminate. Consequently, Billboard estimates that the band’s catalog brings in about $1.2 million annually, but considering the catalog also enjoys a lucrative stream of synchronization uses and even samples, it might even be generating between $1.5 million and $2 million annually. It’s unclear what’s going on with Stone’s recorded masters royalties, but it’s likely the other band members are still being paid their share of Sly & the Family Stone royalties from the band’s records, as is Stone’s estate.
On the other hand, Sylvester Stewart (Stone’s real name) was the solo songwriter on all of the band’s recordings, except for the occasional cover song. Billboard estimates that the publishing royalties from the masters and other publishing licensing generate about $700,000 a year off his masters, but when cover versions, samples and synchronization are also added in, Stone’s publishing catalog probably generated about $1 million to $1.5 million annually over the last three years. As Stone was the sole songwriter for the band, all of this publishing revenue flows to the Jackson estate/Sony Music, while the writer’s share of royalties goes to Primary Wave.
