He was in a “Sorry” state of affairs.
Justin Bieber sold his music catalog for $200 million in December 2022 because he was on the verge of “financial collapse,” according to a new documentary.
“TMZ Investigates: What Happened to Justin Bieber,” which is now available on Hulu, digs into the 31-year-old singer’s money troubles, alleging that he was in debt from pulling out of his “Justice” World Tour in 2022.
This, despite the fact that the “Peaches” crooner has reportedly made somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in his career.
TMZ executive producer Harry Levin claims that Bieber “had to sell his music catalog because he was broke.”
“I was on a call with multiple people — Justin’s side acknowledges that in 2022, he was on the verge of … the words were ‘financial collapse.’ And that’s why he had to sell his catalog,” Levin alleges in the documentary.
Levin also claimed that when Bieber’s then-manager, Scooter Braun, got wind of the sale, he encouraged the singer to wait until January 2023 to make the sale in order to get a tax break.
“Justin said, ‘I gotta sell it now.’ And he sold it in December. That’s how broke he was,” Levin claims.
Also in the doc, TMZ executive producer Don Nash claims that Bieber would have made $90 million had he finished his Justice World Tour, which he canceled in September 2022 because he wanted to prioritize his health.
The TMZ doc comes one month after the Hollywood Reporter published a story also alleging that Bieber had been saddled with millions of dollars in debt after canceling the tour.
Merck Mercuriadis — founder of Hipgnosis, which bought Bieber’s catalog — told the Hollywood Reporter, “With the money up front, you’re free to plan in a way where you don’t have to be beholden to anyone else. You don’t necessarily have to go on tour or make another record, if that’s not how you want to spend the next few years. You can then afford to take some risks on yourself.
“For Justin, I think that was the motivation: He had ill health and was at a time in his life where he was married and very in love and contemplating family,” he continued. “Making the deal gave him the freedom to focus on that and not have to be on the treadmill he’d been on for almost 15 years.”
Meanwhile, Bieber has also sought to dispel rumors about him and Sean “Diddy” Combs during the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial as one of his former protégés.
“Although Justin is not among Sean Combs’ victims, there are individuals who were genuinely harmed by him,” reps for Bieber told People in a statement Thursday night.
“Shifting focus away from this reality detracts from the justice these victims rightfully deserve.”
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