US singer Britney Spears sells her song catalogue

NEW YORK – American singer Britney Spears, the queen of millennial-era bubblegum pop, has sold her music catalogue, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Her music rights were acquired by Primary Wave, a New York-based music and marketing company that specialises in catalogue deals, according to the person, who was not authorised to discuss it publicly.

Spokespeople for Spears, 44, and Primary Wave declined to comment. The news was reported by American celebrity gossip site TMZ on Feb 10.

Details of the transaction were unclear, including the price and exactly what rights were transferred. Similar catalogue acquisitions frequently include the artiste’s royalties as a performing artiste and any songwriting rights, which are separate from those for recordings.

With hits such as …Baby One More Time (1998), Oops!… I Did It Again (2000) and Toxic (2003), Spears became an icon of the new wave of candied electronic pop that dominated the music industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She sold tens of millions of albums, scored five No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart and was tracked incessantly by the celebrity media machine.

While the terms of the Spears deal are unknown, prices for the catalogues of other star recording artistes have soared, with top-tier performers including American rock legend Bruce Springsteen, English musician Sting and Canadian singer Justin Bieber receiving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Spears has writing credits on a number of her tracks, including Everytime (2003); Me Against The Music (2003), with American pop queen Madonna; and a remix of Barbadian singer Rihanna’s song S&M (2010), which reached No. 1.

Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, Spears began her entertainment career as a pre-teen cast member on the Disney show, The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989 to 1996), before signing to Jive Records at age 15. She becoming a chart-topping star one year later with … Baby One More Time.

At her peak, she was a top touring attraction, had lucrative brand deals and, along with American singer Christina Aguilera as well as American boy bands Backstreet Boys and NSync, was played constantly on MTV, defining a new era of pop music.

But by 2007, when she was pictured with a shaved head hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella, her personal struggles had begun to take over her public narrative.

The next year, she was placed in a conservatorship, after her father petitioned a court for authority over his adult daughter’s life and finances, citing her very public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse.

That conservatorship dominated her life

for nearly 14 years. In June 2021, Spears spoke out in court, telling Judge Brenda Penny, who oversaw her conservatorship, “I just want my life back”. Five months later, the judge agreed, terminating the arrangement.

In October 2023, Spears released a memoir titled The Woman In Me, which frequently returns to a theme of feeling too much in the public eye.

In 2024, she disputed rumours she was planning a new album, writing on Instagram: “I will never return to the music industry!!!”

In January, she wrote, “I will never perform in the US again because of extremely sensitive reasons”, but teased a desire to take the stage overseas with one of her sons.

She has two sons aged 19 and 20 with her former husband, American dancer and DJ Kevin Federline, 47.

Spears’ last performance was in 2018, when she ended her Piece Of Me Tour in Austin, Texas. She last released a song in 2022 – a collaboration with English singer Elton John, built around his own Tiny Dancer (1971).

A planned Las Vegas residency called Britney: Domination was cancelled before it began in 2019. Her last studio album, Glory, arrived in 2016. NYTIMES