Frank Zappa’s Recordings, Song Catalog and More Acquired by Universal Music Group

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorUniversal Music Group has announced an agreement with Frank Zappa’s family to acquire the legendary musician’s recordings, publishing catalog, film archive, name and likeness, and the contents of “The Vault,” the storage facility that houses his complete archives.

The agreement is between UMG and the Zappa trust — comprising the musician’s children Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva Zappa — and spans his four-decade career.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, expands on a previous partnership and the assets will continue to be managed by the company’s recorded-music catalog division, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), and Universal Music Publishing Group.A creator of musically complex and often eccentric works, Zappa has few precedents in the music realm and even fewer in the hits-obsessed, multi-billion-dollar music catalog gold rush of the past several years: Amid a sprawling discography that began in 1966, two of his singles cracked the Billboard Top 50 (barely) and one of his 122 official albums went gold.

But his challenging and often brilliant music is likely to be studied for decades to come, and ultimately he may be remembered more as a jazz or avant-garde musician than a rock one.