As things stand, the best way to make money out of dance music is to have had the good fortune to be one of those that got in early. If you ran a record label or released a prolific amount of music a long time ago, you could be in line for a hefty deal to sell your catalogue.
Sure, it’s possible that there’s a lot of rubbish in that catalogue. But so long as there’s at least a few gems, it really doesn’t matter – those who buy the rights can promote it and tap into people’s sense of nostalgia. Yes, that nonsensical idea that everything in the past was better than it is now.
It’s with this in mind that the likes of Beat Music Fund has been swallowing up assets like they’re going out of fashion – King Street Sounds, Chocolate Puma, Joe Smooth and Kevin Saunderson have now all sold their catalogues to the company. But how much money are they actually making in the process?
Over the weekend, Ears To The House tried to find out exactly how much Saunderson got paid for selling them his KMS Records archive. Sadly, we have to concede we weren’t exactly successful in this venture – the best we were able to ascertain was that the figure was somewhere in the five figure range.
Nonetheless, we hear rumours that other names in Detroit are considering selling the family furniture. Derrick May, for example, is understood to be “enthusiastic” on the idea of flogging the Transmat catalogue – although it remains to be seen how any company that did so would navigate some of the inevitably tricky headlines that could well follow.
And by “could follow”, we mean “most definitely would follow”. Not least of all by Ears To The House.
Elsewhere, Carl Craig owns Planet E Communications – the label has released a significant number of Craig’s own productions, some of whom haven’t been available in many years. Or there’s Juan Atkins – perhaps he’s eyeing up the sale of the old Metroplex catalogue?
Nothing gets the old guard of Detroit techno more motivated than money – no matter how much they’d tell you otherwise….
