The following story is courtesy of Ethan Smith from The Wall Street Journal:

The digital revolution has turned recorded songs into commodities, sold for 99 cents or downloaded free and illegally. Now a start-up called SongVest Inc. is betting that the songs themselves - the music and lyrics - are still valuable to die-hard fans.

Starting next month, Madison, Wis.-based SongVest plans to auction on its website portions of the rights to 18 songs recorded by AEROSMITH, GARTH BROOKS, CHER and others. People who buy the songs will receive a share of royalties the tunes generate, but they won't have input into important matters like the songs' use in television commercials or movies. That right will reside with who controls the publishing rights to the songs -- usually a large music publisher that will continue to collect half the royalties generated by any given song.

SongVest is acting as a broker between songwriters, or their heirs, and possible buyers of the rights. When a song is sold, SongVest will collect commissions from both seller and buyer that will range from 25% to 40% of the sale price. After the sale, the company says it will handle royalty payments.

One of SongVest's co-founders, David Prohaska, says his company is pitching the songs as the ultimate memorabilia, rather than as money-making investments. Among the tunes SongVest is selling rights in are the '(Theme from) The Monkees' and 'Friends in Low Places', which has long served as the signature anthem of Mr. Brooks. Some titles are expected to fetch more than $250,000 on the auction market.

Read more here.