Last week, Ears To The House reported on speculation that Juan Atkins might be next in line to receive a big fat cheque from someone like Beat Music Fund. Earlier this year, his friend Kevin Saunderson scored big when he let the Dutch company buy his entire KMS Records archive for a substantial six-figure sum.

We were somewhat surprised that Atkins hadn’t received a similar offer – after all, he owns many of his own masters and the majority of the Metroplex Records archive. Whatever else can be said about that fact, the truth is it’s an important part of dance music history – so what’s going on?

Well, it turns out that the reason Atkins hasn’t sold it is because, er, he’s already sold it. Ears To The House has had it confirmed by two different Detroit sources at the weekend, with one verifying that the sale to the publishing rights was completed in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic for a price of around $125,000.

According to our second Detroit sources – and yes, it’s one of our regular ones, before you ask – “It was with a European company called Elypsia Music Group. They first approached him early in 2020. Juan dragged his feet for a little while on the idea, then the pandemic happened. With lockdown and no parties, he needed money, and he was suddenly very happy to sign on the dotted line.”

Since we wrote our original story last Thursday, an industry source got in touch, stating he believed the archive was “worth at least $250,000”. If that’s correct, Atkins could have held on and got a lot more money…