Kiss banks $300M with sale of song catalog

The rock band Kiss is selling its song catalog, as well as its name, image and likeness, to Pophouse Entertainment Group AB, the Swedish company behind the popular Abba Voyage live avatar performance.

Pophouse is paying more than $300 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing the terms of a private deal. The agreement includes master recordings and publishing rights.

Pophouse wants to turn Kiss into an act that remains popular in culture long after its members stop making new music and performing. The company has announced plans to make a biopic about the group, as well as a live music show featuring avatars of its members.

Pophouse has already made a live show featuring the members of Abba, the legendary Swedish pop group. That show, called Abba Voyage, is making more than $1 million a week in London. Tens of thousands of fans flock to an arena purpose-built for the show to watch avatars of the group perform hits like Dancing Queen and Chiquitita. Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus founded Pophouse with Swedish investor Conni Jonsson.

Bassist and Kiss co-lead singer Gene Simmons and his band mates started talking to the team at Pophouse a couple of years ago in the midst of their final tour, the End of the Road World Tour. The rock band, formed by Simmons and Paul Stanley in the early 1970s, has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and their final tour stretched over five years. 

Kiss and Pophouse and have spent many months working through future projects, and the members of Kiss have already flown to Walt Disney Co.’s Industrial Light & Magic to put on bodysuits and have cameras capture their performances for the avatar show.

“Kiss the touring band is over — we’ve stopped touring after 50 years,” Simmons said in an interview. “What Pophouse will do with our images, our music and our personas is unlike anything anyone has ever seen.”