Bo Diddley set the stage for rock and roll. He had written, performed and recorded music for 50 years when he died in Florida in 2008, and he left a will that set the stage for a fight between his heirs and his long-time business managers/agents and legal counsel. The singer's biggest asset, the rights to his music catalog, is at the center of the probate dispute.

The problem is that Diddley didn't own the rights to his songs. A victim of common unscrupulous recording studio practices, Diddley had signed away his rights to royalties for his recordings early in his career. In 1971, following a rough period, he signed a contract with the same people who had ripped him off, selling his writer's copyrights "forever." He got $10,000 for them. Now, the rights are reverting to the estate, song by song, potentially providing about $400,000 a year to his 22 heirs for decades to come.

An article in the Gainesville Sun explains the complicated dealings of the music industry. Revenue is not just generated by royalties and performances. There are a handful of income sources for a recording artist, as follows:

  • Recording royalties
  • Mechanical royalties
  • Publishing copyrights
  • Writer's copyrights
  • Public performance rights

Record companies pay mechanical royalties to publishers for records purchased. Publishers and writers share the revenue generated by public performance rights, which include stage appearances as well as radio or television play.

Again, at the time of Diddley's death, many of these rights belonged to someone else. In the first quarter of 2010, his estate received $41,209 from his work, according to his family. After the publishing rights of his first two songs return to the estate this month, the estate is expected to earn 10 times that amount, or so Diddley's attorney told the heirs in 2009. By 2011, he'd change his story.

Continued in our next post.

Source: The Gainesville Sun, "Bo Diddley's estate in limbo," Kimberly C. Moore, 02/19/11