Katy Perry can finally afford to shop at Whole Foods! Yay! She might also be able to buy several people dinner every night for years to come. Not that Katy Perry was hurting for money before Monday, but now several reporting outlets say she has sold her stake in the master recordings and publishing rights to the five albums she released between 2008 and 2020.
She sold her part in those albums to Litmus Music which is financially backed by Carlyle. The sale was for a reported $225 million and has pushed Perry's reported net worth to at least $340 million. According to Forbes Magazine, Katy Perry should now be one of the ten wealthiest female recording artists. Before she sold her stake in the albums, she had a reported net worth of well under $200 million so she probably had to do her shopping at Aldi. But no more!
The five albums she had a stake in were One Of The Boys, Teenage Dream, PRISM, Witness and Smile. The first three albums mentioned all sold at least 2 million copies worldwide. The last two albums, though, did not sell as well. Katy Perry hasn't released an LP since 2020's Smile.
Katy Perry was rich before but she's much more wealthy now
In the last few years, Perry, who is married to actor Orlando Bloom, has focused on spending time with her young family and has had a Las Vegas residency. Of course, the residency pays quite a bit in itself so it's not like Perry had to sell her stake in her catalog. Perry also does a lot of philanthropy work and spends time doing that as well.
Perry's sale of her stake follows many other musical artists doing the same thing. Most of the money numbers are undisclosed, such as when Paul Simon sold his catalog rights to BMG in June of 2023, but we know that when Genesis and Phil Collins sold their publishing rights to Concord Music Group they did so for $300 million.
In other words, musical artists can make a lot of money by selling their stake in their own music. One might wonder how it feels to sell a part of oneself to a company, but all the money helps. Also, if you know Katy Perry, you might ask her to pay for dinner this week.