Pop icon Britney Spears has sold the rights to her entire music catalogue, according to information obtained by the BBC.
The 44-year-old singer is reported to have finalized the sale on 30 December, transferring the rights to independent music publisher Primary Wave in a deal estimated at around $200 million (£146 million). Neither Primary Wave nor representatives for Spears have publicly commented on the agreement.
Spears built her career on global hits including …Baby One More Time, Oops!… I Did It Again, Toxic, and Gimme More. She has sold more than 150 million records worldwide and released nine studio albums since her debut in 1999, making her one of the most commercially successful female artists of her generation.
In January 2024, Spears stated that she did not plan to return to the music industry. Her most recent release was a 2022 duet with Elton John.
Primary Wave, founded two decades ago by music executive Lawrence Mestel, has previously acquired rights linked to major artists such as Notorious BIG, Prince, and Whitney Houston. The company first gained attention after purchasing a significant share of Kurt Cobain’s portion of the Nirvana catalogue.
The financial details of Spears’ transaction have not been officially disclosed. However, large-scale catalogue sales have become increasingly common in recent years. Bruce Springsteen sold his body of work to Sony in 2021 for approximately $500 million, while Justin Bieber reportedly reached a $200 million agreement with Hipgnosis Songs Capital in 2023. Other artists, including Justin Timberlake and Shakira, have also entered similar deals.
The sale follows a period of significant personal change for Spears. In 2021, a 13-year conservatorship that controlled her finances and aspects of her personal life was terminated. The legal arrangement had placed her father in charge of key decisions.
In 2023, Spears released her memoir, The Woman in Me, in which she described her experiences during the conservatorship. Her former husband, Kevin Federline, later published his own memoir, You Thought You Knew, at the end of 2025.
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