Red Hot Chili Peppers Sell Recorded Catalog to Warner for More Than $300 Million

Red Hot Chili Peppers have sold their recorded music catalog to Warner Music Group for more than $300 million, according to Billboard. The package covers the band’s entire recorded output, including 13 studio albums, and is reportedly tied to annual revenue of about $26 million.

The sale gives Warner back a body of work it has already helped define. The label originally issued Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Californication, which makes the purchase feel less like a surprise pivot than a familiar major-label reunion with one of the group’s biggest commercial stretches. The band had owned the recorded catalog on its own for the past year and, according to reports, had been seeking $350 million for it.

This is separate from the group’s 2015 publishing deal, when Hipgnosis Songs Fund bought their songwriting rights for around $150 million. Those rights may not stay put for long, either. Sony Music is currently pursuing Hipgnosis, now operating as Recognition Music Group, as part of a multi-billion dollar acquisition process that could shift that ownership again.

For the Chili Peppers, the timing lands after a busy recent run. In 2022, they released Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, which remain their most recent albums. Their catalog sale also places them in a now-familiar tier of legacy acts whose recorded work has become an asset class for the biggest companies in music, alongside Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Justin Bieber. At the same time, artists including Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa have gone in the opposite direction, buying back control of their own material.