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 sold their catalogs with the band to Round Hill Music, a rep for the company has confirmed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources tell Variety the deal was for $50 million.

The Round Hill deal does not encompass copyrights belonging to the estates of original singer Layne Staley or original bassist Mike Starr, who passed away in 2002 and 2011, respectively; on Monday their respective estates announced they had sold their music rights to Primary Wave.

Round Hill will receive a 100% interest in the four current members’ copyrights to Alice In Chains’ masters and publishing — 94 compositions and 159 recordings — along with neighboring rights. The catalog includes such rock-radio staples as “Would?,” “Man in the Box,” “Them Bones” and “Rooster.” Alice in Chains compositions by Cantrell — the group’s main songwriter over the course of its entire career — are part of the pact, though his solo work is not.

“If you look at the grunge category, there was Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden,” says Josh Gruss, Round Hill’s founder and CEO. “There’s such a loyalty with the fan base and such quality to the music. Alice in Chains music still holds up really, really well, and there’s just nothing else like it.”

The sale comes amid a parade of catalog megadeals that have underscored the enduring value of music. Of last year’s 15 highest-paid musicians, ten made the cut by selling copyrights. Alice In Chains’ haul falls in the same range as the sums received by acts from Blake Shelton to Shakira to ZZ Top (though the exact nature of the copyrights involved differs).

Formed in Seattle by Cantrell and Kinney in 1987, Alice in Chains arose during the “grunge” era of the early 1990s but were always slightly separate from that scene. Their music often had more in common with classic rock than the punk and indie sounds that influenced grunge, and album radio embraced them immediately. After making their debut on Columbia Records in 1990 with “Facelift,” their song “Would?” — featured on the scene-defining “Singles” film and soundtrack — paved the way for their breakthrough, 1992’s “Dirt.” Yet the group lost momentum as Staley succumbed to substance abuse and effectively disbanded after the release of a self-titled studio album in 1995 and an “Unplugged” album the following year. After Staley’s passing in 2002, the band took a hiatus of several years before returning with a new lead singer, William DuVall, and continues to record and tour.

While the group’s often-dark and aggressive music may not seem like a natural fit for such common sync uses as advertisements, six of its releases reached the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart — two, the “Jar of Flies” EP and the self-titled album, reached No. 1 — and all of the group’s core albums have been certified multiplatinum. Also, the group’s songs helped form the musical backdrop for their generation. In 2020, the band was honored with the Founders Award by Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), formerly known as the Experience Music Project, which was founded in 2000 by the late Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen.

“With such a dedicated following and an enduring catalog, there is tons of upside potential for licensing across film, TV and videos games,” says Jordan Passman, founder and CEO of Score a Score, a music production and licensing company.

I believe Alice In Chains was the best band out of the grunge era. And the current singer Duvall isn't a drug addict like Staley and has breathed new life into them. They're awesome live.

"Rooster" is effectively about Alice in Chains guitarist-songwriter Jerry Cantrell's father. "Rooster" was his nickname in Vietnam, where he fought in the war. The elder Cantrell wouldn't talk about the war, so Jerry crafted the lyrics based on what he thought where his father's feelings and experiences, told from his perspective.

Jerry said: "He's only seen us play once, and I played this song for him when we were in this club opening for Iggy Pop. I'll never forget it. He was standing in the back and he heard all the words and stuff. Of course, I was never in Vietnam and he won't talk about it, but when I wrote this it felt right... like these were things he might have felt or thought. And I remember when we played it he was back by the soundboard and I could see him. He was back there with his big gray Stetson and his cowboy boots - he's a total Oklahoma man - and at the end, he took his hat off and just held it in the air. And he was crying the whole time. This song means a lot to me."

They deserve every penny.

Music rights for the beatles went for only triple that amount inflation adjusted. The other numbers thrown around for the 1970s artists are pathetic or desperation attempts to keep a lifestyle for another 10 years.

The 1980s were full of bands who signed their rights away early for what at the time was good money. Most also broke up and reformed into other groups many times to remove themselves from contracts. The bands of the 1970s dominated the media but the money went to record companies that were becomeing the name on the building of wide media companies.

The 1990s it was a fad to open your own studio and record label, along the apple records model, and the tax code supported it, all that shit is a business expense for a musician. MTV was a useful tool to 2nd teir bands to sell records to markets they never knew about. It was possible to earn a even income releasing records every 2 years and touring only 30-60 nights a year. Most of the bands that hit, their members are rich because they worked a band, a record company and a solo career on many media platforms.
The record companies of old made money and gave a fraction to artists as we replaced vinyl and cassette with CDs.

The late 90s to 2008 was a golden era, recording was cheap, touring was immensely profitable, expenses of the business were low because the cost to press a CD dropped to near nothing. Some profits escaped to cheap copies but with every artist editing their own stuff on computer song production prices were part of being a musician. The old music was suddenly “remastered”... aka not compressed and notched filtered for quick vinal and tape production.

Once 2008 came around and streaming became a thing a lot of the draw of producing more than top streamer became suspect. Overall quality of albums has been in the toliet for past 14 years.

In 2020 when Taylor Swift started rerecording her discography with specific goal of gaining her rights and establisihing her own label the value of older bands with dead members shot up and the value of current band rights dropped. Her enterprise cracked the record deal boilerplate that had been around for 60 years.

The 250+ million dollar rights artist and bands are now bands with a dead members and their last hit produced. A good number of those are in the hands of the traditional labels. The only billion dollar catalog is the rolling stones held by BMG.

As we have seen with the last 2 years, twitter is death of good will and old artists.

“It was sound financial advice that McCartney may have come to regret giving on August 14, 1985, when Michael Jackson purchased the publishing rights to the vast majority of the Beatles’ catalog for $47 million, outbidding McCartney himself. “

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