KISS SELLS OUT! But what did they really sell?
What was considered just another veteran act selling their song publishing by lazy "reporters", is actually a different deal than most people assumed. And you know what happens when people "assume".
I normally don’t get music news links from my wife unless they’re obituaries or something similar, but apparently, she couldn’t pass up this news.
From Variety:
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Kiss have sold their music catalog, name, image, and likeness — including their iconic makeup designs — to Pophouse Entertainment, the Sweden-based music investment firm behind ABBA’s “Voyage” hologram show. While terms of the deal were not officially announced, Bloomberg and Associated Press said it was worth upwards of $300 million.
In a statement, Pophouse plans to promote the group’s “iconic music, enigmatic personas, and expressive imagery for generations to come.” Indeed, news of the deal arrives [sic] just four months after Kiss unveiled plans for an avatar concert similar to ABBA’s with digital versions of the group.
“Our partnership will fuse Kiss' rich history and iconic status with cutting-edge technology, allowing fans—now and in the future—to experience the band like never before,” said Pophouse CEO Per Sundin at the time of that deal.
$300 million dollars. But that’s not the part I’m trying to wrap my head around.
It’s probably a better deal than when Kiss – in this case and ever since, just Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley - sold the band’s pre-Revenge song publishing (minus Peter Criss’ songwriting contributions since he put up a stink and refused to give up “Beth” and other songs co-credited to him, and also minus the shares not owned by other publishers) in 1989 to the Japanese music company Horipro for a sum far less than the $300 Million they got in this deal. (In 2019, a company called Mojo Music & Media bought HoriPro Entertainment Group, only to get bought out by Concord five years later). This leaves a mystery as to how much of Kiss’ existing song publishing was purchased by Pophouse.
But instead of relying on an outside news source (even though the likes of Variety and Billboard are the most reliable ones) to figure this out, we’ll go right to the source: the website of Pophouse Entertainment themselves:
From Pophouse’s press release yesterday:
Pophouse, the pioneering global entertainment and music investment firm, announces the acquisition of the music catalogue, brand name and likeness - including the world- famous face paint designs – as well as trademarks of the iconic American rock band KISS. This groundbreaking partnership will enable Pophouse to further develop and amplify the unique KISS legacy worldwide: preserving their iconic music, enigmatic personas, and expressive imagery for generations to come. Plans for a biopic, an avatar show, and a KISS-themed experience are already in the works. KISS will remain active and play key roles in the development of the projects, working closely together with Pophouse.
Pophouse has today concluded a landmark agreement with the iconic band KISS. Pophouse is the Swedish entertainment and music investment firm renowned for its development of brand-building activities in music and entertainment, such as the groundbreaking ABBA Voyage show in London, in which Pophouse is the founding investor.
Pophouse has acquired KISS’ artist share of the master recordings and publishing rights.* Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.
Of course, Kiss’s back catalog from their eponymous debut from 1974 (which recently got a wonderful Dolby Atmos remix posted to Apple Music) up until their semi-falsified 1998 “reunion” album Psycho Circus and its companion Alive!: The Millenium Concert (the latter of which seems to have disappeared from streaming services as a standalone album (it is currently only available as the closing 1/4th of the Alive! 1974-2000 compilation) remains in the hands of Universal Music Group. That means that if there are any master rights to be had by Pophouse as part of this deal, then that would only involve post-2000 releases owned by one of two business entities owned by Gene and Paul (Simstan Music Limited and GAPP 2002 Ltd.), like their last two (and absolutely weakest) studio albums Sonic Boom and Monster, and the slew of live albums that they’ve damn near dumped onto the market since 2003 with their first post-Universal release Symphony: Alive IV, with most of those part of a series of Kiss Off The Soundboard archival releases directed mostly at the hardcore fans. Not exactly stuff that will perennially sell as much as Destroyer or Alive! I or the oodles of compilations that have existed since 1978.
So what exactly did Pophouse buy relating to Kiss?
If I am reading Pophouse’s own press release right, their acquisition of “Kiss’ artist share of the master recordings and publishing rights” means that, for $300 Million dollars, Pophouse has basically bought Gene and Paul’s income stream from their songwriting and recordings for a huge lump sum. Why would Gene and Paul, who are supposed to be astute businessmen as well as fine songwriters and iconic rock stars, sell out for a huge lump sum? Dee Snider of Twisted Sister explained it last summer in a podcast interview in reference to selling his own Snidest Music catalog to Universal in 2015:
“It’s math! And I was told there’d be no math in rock ‘n’ roll!... But when you’re getting royalty checks every year, and they’re big – I’m in the 50% tax bracket between state and federal [tax codes] – they’re chopping off 50%.” Getting your publishing or your income stream bought out means you actually avoid this, get a huge lump sum – which Snider equated as getting “ten years worth of royalties in advance, or whatever that number is.” – and not have to pay as much in taxes afterward. And, but, also, according to Snider: “I can take this chunk of change, and I can invest it, secure it, and make it my retirement fund, which I did. So it goes from being a thing that comes in, and you’re getting half of it taken away by the government every six months, to a guaranteed, ‘I know I can work with this.’ So a lot of people are doing it for that reason.”
But Pophouse hasn’t just bought the income stream of at least two musicians (and I’m damn sure founding members Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, and their many successors are not part of this deal and will have something to say about it in the coming days and weeks). They also bought the band’s name, logo, iconography, and likenesses. Keep in mind that Pophouse is also the company that is behind Kiss’ forthcoming avatar show – one inspired and spurred on by Pophouse’s own ABBA Voyage holographic avatar show in London. With their classic onstage characterizations, Kiss is the band most likely to get away with having virtual replacements perform live in their stead for as long as people are willing to pony up the cash to witness such a thing. If you haven’t noticed, band/musician iconography, whether it's Kiss, the Beatles, the Ramones, Black Flag, or even John Coltrane – is still a big business. Got all the albums from your favorite artist, maybe even in multiple formats? Here! Buy the 50th Anniversary T-shirts! Buy the throw blankets! Buy the band-branded liquor! (That last one is a bit of an irony where Kiss is concerned – Gene had reputedly turned down an offer to market Kiss-branded wine around the time of the Reunion Tour simply because of his own proto-straight-edge beliefs. The opportunity to rake in another six-figure sum from yet another set of band-branded merch, including, yep, Kiss brand Cold Gin, changed his mind.)
By the way: Note the asterisk in the quote from Pophouse’s press release. That leads to a legal disclaimer at the bottom: The transaction is subject to certain conditions and regulatory approvals. That’s standard language, but again, there’s also the issue of the other two guys who first made up the other half of Kiss. Ace Frehley has maintained for years that he still holds the rights to his own characters’ makeup and has only licensed it to Gene and Paul since at least his second and final voluntary departure from the band in 2002 after the so-called Farewell Tour (which was when his contract for the 1996 Reunion Tour expired). (When Gene and Paul curated their own tribute album, Kiss My Ass, in 1994, the cover art had to be modified because Ace would not give permission to the band to use his makeup design – apparently, there were some financial disagreements between them that weren’t resolved until Ace agreed to participate in the MTV Unplugged show.) I don’t know if Peter Criss even gives a shit, given that he co-owns the publishing to “Beth” – which makes him probably the only member of the band to retain anything related to song publishing from the Casablanca Years.
What further becomes of the Kiss/Pophouse deal remains to be seen, given that age-old “subject to certain conditions” clause and the possibility of the Frehley and Criss legal teams butting in (never mind other entities like the estate of Eric Carr [Peter Criss’ successor] or Vinnie Vincent, neither of whom were ever part of the band’s business partnership, instead being contracted employees, and wouldn’t have much of a case beyond retaining whatever song publishing rights were due to them). But do you want to know a delicious irony about Kiss’ new business partners?
Pophouse was co-founded and is co-owned by Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA. He’s a 50% owner of the company.
That means ¼ of ABBA owns fifty percent of Kiss now. Don’t get it twisted – ABBA made a lot of great records (I’ll let someone like The Meatmen’s Tesco Vee, who is an über-dedicated ABBA disciple, wax eloquently on them better than I ever could). But ABBA was practically the polar opposite of Kiss back then.
Somewhere, the women who were teenagers or pre-teens in the late 70s, trying to listen to their copies of ABBA albums like ABBA The Album and Voulez-Vous in their room while their older or younger brother was blasting Rock And Roll Over or Hotter Than Hell on his stereo at top volume, are laughing like hell right now.