Kiss has sold the rights to its music catalog, name and visual identity to Pophouse Entertainment

New York band Kiss has sold the rights to its music catalog, name and visual identity, including its classic makeup, to Swedish music investment company Pophouse Entertainment. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however Bloomberg And Associated Press stated that Kiss earned more than $300 million. Comments Igor Gavrilov.

The sale of the Kiss catalog and visual image was announced a couple of months after the end of Kiss’s farewell “End Of The Road” tour. The group stopped touring exactly half a century after its creation, having sold 100 million records. After finishing the tour, the Kiss musicians made it clear to the audience that they were not going to stop monetizing the world-famous brand. At the end of the final Kiss show, which took place in December 2023 at Madison Square Garden, holographic avatars of the musicians appeared on stage. Lead singer Paul Stanley later stated that a “new era of Kiss” would now begin.

The Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, to which the Kiss legacy was sold, manages brands such as Cyndi Lauper, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii (including the DJ’s museum), as well as the ABBA Museum in Stockholm and the ABBA Voyage show in London. The company is doing well; suffice it to say that ABBA Voyage alone earns $1 million a week.

Pophouse Entertainment now owns the rights to the entire Kiss catalog, the images of the musicians, and the future show for which avatars of Kiss members will be created.

Kiss avatars were created by George Lucas’ company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). As in the case of ABBA Voyage, ILM technology recorded the facial expressions of the musicians and the movements of their bodies in order to subsequently give the group virtually eternal life. Last winter, Kiss bass guitarist Gene Simmons said that $200 million had already been invested in the show. However, the show is not expected to premiere until 2027.

If the ABBA Voyage show involves the combination of digital doubles of the quartet and live accompanists on stage, then in the case of Kiss nothing similar is announced. The upcoming show, as we see it from today, is an attraction that repeats from evening to evening without changes and without improvisation, despite the fact that, formally speaking, Kiss is the first rock band to decide on digital transformation.

One can hardly expect innovative solutions from Kiss designed to preserve the rock and roll spirit of the group in the new incarnation. The New York foursome were never shy about their purely commercial nature. Kiss’s innovation, in fact, consisted in the fact that for the first time they turned a rock band into a market attraction. Kiss did not play heavy metal, their style was glam rock with hard elements, and the most recognizable song “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” was pure disco. And glam was not invented by Kiss, but by David Bowie and T. Rex. It wasn’t Kiss who were the first to apply makeup on their faces either – remember the painted faces of David Bowie and Alice Cooper. High platforms, leather suits, pyrotechnics, flying over the audience, blood from the mouth – all this has happened before. Kiss are great instrumentalists, but they never became the best in the heavy genre. Perhaps the phenomenal length of Gene Simmons’ tongue is a unique thing, but Simmons owes it only to the Creator.

The only thing that Kiss really pioneered was selling all kinds of merchandise, comics, dolls and image rights for advertising, cartoons and movies. And now this know-how is also passing into the wrong hands.

The two founding members of Kiss, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, are 72 and 74 years old, respectively. Their stage and media images are so easy to replicate that they can easily exist separately from the prototypes. However, the frontmen are not going to give up music. Gene Simmons is going on tour at the end of April, fortunately he has a lot of excellent solo material in his baggage. Paul Stanley plays rock, funk and soul in his side lineups. You don’t have to put on makeup before going on stage, and it gets harder and harder to spit fire over the years. It is no longer necessary to go on long tours: a contract with Pophouse Entertainment will allow you to somehow make ends meet.

The only question is how Pophouse Entertainment will “recoup” its investment in the years it will take to prepare a show with Kiss avatars. The Kiss music catalog is amortized much less than, for example, The Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin or AC/DC. Simply put, Kiss has far fewer songs that are wildly popular outside of the fan community. If you don’t believe me, think about the last time you heard Kiss in a commercial or in a superhero action movie trailer. The new owners will have to re-promote “Dragon”, “Star Child”, “Cat” and other Kiss images. It’s not at all clear how to sell Gene Simmons’ 13-centimeter tongue, insured for $1 million, without the participation of its owner.