Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Sean “Puff Daddy/Diddy” Combs’ decision to give artists and songwriters the publishing rights that he owns on songs from his 1990s powerhouse label Bad Boy, confirmed last week, was surprising, to put it mildly, and possibly unprecedented in its scale. At a time when music catalogs are routinely selling for nine figures and awareness of publishing’s value is at an all-time high, the decision to reassign his rights on those songs — many of which were hits — to the artists and songwriters is highly unusual, even for a man whose net worth was estimated by Forbes last year to be nearly a billion dollars.
