The shocking ‘real reason’ Justin Bieber played all his old songs on YouTube at Coachella

Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance was absolutely huge, but everyone’s wondering the same thing after watching it: Why did he play all his old songs on YouTube?!

He was reportedly paid $10 million to sit behind a MacBook at the California festival and play videos of his younger self singing tracks like Baby, Favorite Girl, Beauty and a Beat and Never Say Never. He sang along to bits of them, but didn’t actually perform the tracks in full live, and apparently, there’s a reason for it.

The Daily Mail has claimed Justin wasn’t allowed to sing his old songs live because he sold his whole music catalogue in 2022, so he doesn’t own the rights to them anymore. In December 2022, the now-32-year-old sold all the music he released before 31st September 2021 to Hipgnosis Songs Capital for a whopping $200 million (£162 million).

This included the publishing copyrights to his entire 290-song catalogue, as well as his share in the original master recordings of his songs.

Credit: Coachella/YouTube

Justin hasn’t confirmed that this was the reason he played YouTube videos of his old songs at Coachella rather than sing them all live, but it would make sense because he sang tracks from his new albums Swag and Swag II in full, which were released after the sale. It was only the old songs that he played on YouTube.

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In the documentary TMZ Investigates: What Happened to Justin Bieber?, TMZ’s executive producer Harvey Levin alleged that Bieber “had to sell his music catalogue because he was broke”. He claimed: “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’.”

TMZ also alleged that the singer’s manager at the time, Scooter Braun, told him to wait until January 2023 to sell his music to get a “tax break,” but he didn’t want to wait.

However, a rep for Bieber denied the allegations that he had money troubles, telling Us Weekly in April 2025: “This is just clickbait stupidity based on unnamed — and clearly ill-informed — ‘sources,’ disappointed that they no longer work with Justin. As Justin forges his own way forward, these unnecessary stories and inaccurate assumptions will continue. But they won’t deter him from staying committed to following the right path.”

In another statement to The Hollywood Reporter, a rep said: “Any source that is trying to sell you a story about alleged financial distress… either doesn’t understand the entertainment industry or, more likely, is trying to paint an unflattering portrait of Justin, which bears no resemblance to reality.”

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Featured image credit: Coachella/YouTube