Justin Bieber sold the music he had released before Sept. 31, 2021 to Hipgnosis Songs Capital for $200 million in December 2022, a deal that covered 290 songs and his share of the original master recordings. That sale has now been pulled into a fresh round of claims that the pop star was under severe financial strain, allegations his representative rejected in April 2025.
TMZ Investigates: What Happened to Justin Bieber? claimed Bieber earned between $500 million and $1 billion over his career and still had to sell his catalogue because he was broke. Harvey Levin said Bieber’s side acknowledged that in 2022 he was on the verge of what were described as “financial collapse” conditions. The program also alleged that Bieber was living a costly lifestyle, flying on expensive jets and paying for multiple mega-mansions in cash.
The catalogue sale itself was not made in a vacuum. It came after the Justice World Tour was delayed first by the pandemic and then again after Bieber was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome in 2022. He cancelled the tour in March 2023. Later reporting tied the sale to claims about money owed after the tour was scrapped, including The Hollywood Reporter’s allegation that Bieber owed $20 million to promoter AEG after receiving a $40 million advance.
That reporting also said Scooter Braun’s company Hybe stepped in to clear the debt, with Bieber allegedly agreeing to pay Hybe back over the next 10 years. Hybe allegedly found that he owed Braun another $9 million personally and $24 million to Hybe. Bieber’s team denied the financial distress claims in April 2025, saying to Us Weekly that the allegations were “clickbait stupidity” based on unnamed, ill-informed sources who no longer work with him.
The denial was sharper in a separate statement to The Hollywood Reporter, where a representative said any source pushing a story about Bieber’s alleged financial distress either did not understand the entertainment industry or was trying to paint an unflattering portrait of him that bore no resemblance to reality. That leaves the key question not whether the catalogue changed hands — it did — but whether the sale reflected distress or simply a major monetization move that became a magnet for speculation.
