Alright Maidenfans, bring out your pitchforks for a potentially controversial topic. If you've followed music news the last few years, you may have heard stories of legacy artists (primarily from the 60s and 70s) who have sold their catalogs off to major labels in multimillion dollar deals. The reasoning seems to be that it's unclear if a given rock artist's catalog will still hold the same value in 50+ years, so the best thing for the artist's family and generational wealth is to sell now while it still carries a high price tag.
As much as we would like to believe otherwise, Maiden is probably not immune from this. Once they stop touring and are no longer an active band, interest in the band is going to naturally decline - especially if they keep up the same pace in archival projects (i.e. none). Who knows if Maiden will still be popular in 50 years. Think about music from 100 years ago now. While there are some artists whose shadows still loom large (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, etc) the vast majority of touring and recording artists are mostly forgotten by those outside niche fan circles. While there is no way of knowing for sure, I just have a hard time seeing Maiden continuing to be relevant to people in the 2070s.
So then the question becomes, should Maiden sell the catalog sooner than later? There are two recent artist sales that have me considering how this might be a benefit for Maiden:
1: Frank Zappa's family recently sold off his catalog to Universal. This was a pretty surprising move because Frank had encouraged his wife on his deathbed to do exactly that, and she refused. Now that she has passed and the kids have had pretty public conflicts stemming from the Zappa business, there has been a catalog selloff. Considering how much of a family man Steve Harris is, I could see family stability being a consideration here as an artist's children fighting over the artist's catalog/royalties/etc is a tale as old as time.
2: I'm about to commit a forum cardinal sin here in invoking Kiss, but they sold off aspects of their catalog recently as well. The relevance to Maiden is twofold. One is the obvious, Maiden and Kiss are in unique positions as the value of their music is not the only thing at play but also the value of merchandising. The other consideration is that there have been a ton of archival Kiss releases in the pipeline as a result of this sale, compared to a pretty long period of half hearted archival releases if anything was released at all. Sound familiar? This isn't just limited to Kiss. Recently Pink Floyd sold off their catalog and now we're getting a theatrical 4k restoration of Live At Pompeii. It seems to me like these types of projects end up being more frequent and successful when the artist is kept somewhat at arm's length (I'm not sure the specifics on how this works, I know the artists still participate to some capacity in some of these projects).
So what do you think? The Maiden well has felt pretty barren for the last decade outside the odd studio album and vinyl reissue. Is it time for Maiden to sell so that somebody who has a better pulse on what the fans want can give us the goods? The documentary project has me thinking about this as well, as I feel this could be in some ways testing the waters for allowing large scale archival projects.
Discuss!
As much as we would like to believe otherwise, Maiden is probably not immune from this. Once they stop touring and are no longer an active band, interest in the band is going to naturally decline - especially if they keep up the same pace in archival projects (i.e. none). Who knows if Maiden will still be popular in 50 years. Think about music from 100 years ago now. While there are some artists whose shadows still loom large (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, etc) the vast majority of touring and recording artists are mostly forgotten by those outside niche fan circles. While there is no way of knowing for sure, I just have a hard time seeing Maiden continuing to be relevant to people in the 2070s.
So then the question becomes, should Maiden sell the catalog sooner than later? There are two recent artist sales that have me considering how this might be a benefit for Maiden:
1: Frank Zappa's family recently sold off his catalog to Universal. This was a pretty surprising move because Frank had encouraged his wife on his deathbed to do exactly that, and she refused. Now that she has passed and the kids have had pretty public conflicts stemming from the Zappa business, there has been a catalog selloff. Considering how much of a family man Steve Harris is, I could see family stability being a consideration here as an artist's children fighting over the artist's catalog/royalties/etc is a tale as old as time.
2: I'm about to commit a forum cardinal sin here in invoking Kiss, but they sold off aspects of their catalog recently as well. The relevance to Maiden is twofold. One is the obvious, Maiden and Kiss are in unique positions as the value of their music is not the only thing at play but also the value of merchandising. The other consideration is that there have been a ton of archival Kiss releases in the pipeline as a result of this sale, compared to a pretty long period of half hearted archival releases if anything was released at all. Sound familiar? This isn't just limited to Kiss. Recently Pink Floyd sold off their catalog and now we're getting a theatrical 4k restoration of Live At Pompeii. It seems to me like these types of projects end up being more frequent and successful when the artist is kept somewhat at arm's length (I'm not sure the specifics on how this works, I know the artists still participate to some capacity in some of these projects).
So what do you think? The Maiden well has felt pretty barren for the last decade outside the odd studio album and vinyl reissue. Is it time for Maiden to sell so that somebody who has a better pulse on what the fans want can give us the goods? The documentary project has me thinking about this as well, as I feel this could be in some ways testing the waters for allowing large scale archival projects.
Discuss!
they can do whatever they want with their songs.
