Alice In Chains Members Sell Catalog to Round Hill for $50 Million

Alice in Chains members Jerry Cantrell, Sean Kinney, Mike Inez and William DuVall have bought their catalogs with the band to Spherical Hill Music, a rep for the corporate has confirmed. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed, however sources inform Selection the deal was for $50 million.

The Spherical Hill deal doesn’t embody copyrights belonging to the estates of unique singer Layne Staley or unique bassist Mike Starr, who handed away in 2002 and 2011, respectively; on Monday their respective estates introduced that they had bought their music rights to Main Wave.

Spherical Hill will obtain a 100% curiosity within the 4 present members’ copyrights to Alice In Chains’ masters and publishing — 94 compositions and 159 recordings — together with neighboring rights. The catalog consists of such rock-radio staples as “Would?,” “Man within the Field,” “Them Bones” and “Rooster.” Alice in Chains compositions by Cantrell — the group’s most important songwriter over the course of its whole profession — are a part of the pact, although his solo work shouldn’t be.

“If you happen to take a look at the grunge class, there was Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden,” says Josh Gruss, Spherical Hill’s founder and CEO. “There’s such a loyalty with the fan base and such high quality to the music. Alice in Chains music nonetheless holds up actually, very well, and there’s simply nothing else prefer it.”

The sale comes amid a parade of catalog megadeals which have underscored the enduring worth of music. Of final 12 months’s 15 highest-paid musicians, ten made the reduce by promoting copyrights. Alice In Chains’ haul falls in the identical vary because the sums acquired by acts from Blake Shelton to Shakira to ZZ Prime (although the precise nature of the copyrights concerned differs).

Fashioned in Seattle by Cantrell and Kinney in 1987, Alice in Chains arose in the course of the “grunge” period of the early Nineties however had been all the time barely separate from that scene. Their music typically had extra in widespread with basic rock than the punk and indie sounds that influenced grunge, and album radio embraced them instantly. After making their debut on Columbia Data in 1990 with “Facelift,” their track “Would?” — featured on the scene-defining “Singles” movie and soundtrack — paved the best way for his or her breakthrough, 1992’s “Grime.” But the group misplaced momentum as Staley succumbed to substance abuse and successfully disbanded after the discharge of a self-titled studio album in 1995 and an “Unplugged” album the next 12 months. After Staley’s passing in 2002, the band took a hiatus of a number of years earlier than returning with a brand new lead singer, William DuVall, and continues to report and tour.

Whereas the group’s often-dark and aggressive music might not look like a pure match for such widespread sync makes use of as ads, six of its releases reached the highest 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart — two, the “Jar of Flies” EP and the self-titled album, reached No. 1 — and the entire group’s core albums have been licensed multiplatinum. Additionally, the group’s songs helped kind the musical backdrop for his or her era. In 2020, the band was honored with the Founders Award by Seattle’s Museum of Pop Tradition (MoPOP), previously referred to as the Expertise Music Challenge, which was based in 2000 by the late Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen.

“With such a devoted following and a permanent catalog, there’s tons of upside potential for licensing throughout movie, TV and movies video games,” says Jordan Passman, founder and CEO of Rating a Rating, a music manufacturing and licensing firm.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg additionally publishes a music enterprise publication through Substack.