Why did Universal buy Bob Dylan's songs?

The big news about Bob Dylan selling his entire songwriting catalog to Universal (for somewhere in between $300 and $400 million), got a fresh perspective in the Rolling Stone - why did Universal buy it? It seems the major music companies feel they need to take a stand against upstarts like Hipgnosis Songs and Primary Wave, which have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying songwriters' catalogs. This big spending spree is likely to continue as "music rights become one of the most reliable growth assets of the pandemic era".