Glenn Tipton has joined the rest of the music community in selling off 50% ownership in his song catalog publishing rights, plus worldwide administration rights to Reach Music.
What does this mean? It means that Glenn, like many other major songwriters, has decided to sell of a large share of his song writing catalog plus the administration of the publishing to Reach Music for a large cash up front deal, plus 50% of the proceeds moving forward. Reach Music will leverage that catalog into monies through various licensing deals. Reach will now have the final say as to how the music can be used in movies, commercials, and other media outlets.
Glenn Tipton said: “I deliberated for a long time on whether to relinquish 50% of my publishing to another company and realized as soon as I had a conversation with Michael Closter and Scott Rubin from Reach Music just how knowledgeable they are of both mine and Judas Priest’s catalog and that they would be really pro-active with the songs. I believe I now have a team who understand and are geared up to deal with metal and look forward to working together in the future!”
These days, publishing and sync licensing deals are really the way artists make their money. It's really not a bad move, although it does seem odd for any artists to relinquish control of their catalog. Glenn got a nice fat check, Reach Music will hunt down those lucrative deals while Glenn sits back and still collects 50% of the proceeds. Not a bad way to fund your retirement.
written by Patrick Capone