The Beach Boys are the latest to join the heritage artists buyouts bonanza, selling a controlling interest in their master recordings and a cut of their publishing, memorabilia and overall Beach Boys brand to Irving Azoff’s new company Iconic Artists Group.
The deal doesn’t cover all the band’s output, as Universal Music Group owns a big chunk of their 1960s recordings and publishing, but Bloomberg still estimated that it could have been worth $100m-$200m.
On one level, the strategy for Iconic is fairly standard: making the most of the Beach Boys in the year of their 60th anniversary. “Potential plans include a documentary, a television tribute special, a touring exhibit, and more — and maybe, if everything lines up just right, their first reunion shows in nearly a decade,” reported Rolling Stone.
What we found just as interesting, though, is how Iconic is looking further forwards, with a focus on technology. “That includes VR, AR, 3D, CGI, natural language processing. That, to me, is probably the most interesting aspect of what’s going to transform our business,” said Iconic CEO Oliver Chastan.
“In five years, I could send you a text and say, ‘At 2 p.m., let’s put our Oculus Rift glasses on, and let’s go see the Beach Boys record ‘Good Vibrations’ at Western Recorders.’”
We tend to write a lot about whizzy digital marketing for frontline artists, but we’re just as interested in how the teams around heritage acts are eyeing new technologies.
From Iconic’s plans for the Beach Boys and Abba’s avatar tour to Elton John’s exploration of VR and AR, and Dolly Parton recording a swathe of unreleased songs to click tracks for producers to use in the future, the potential around digital legacies is huge.
The Beach Boys may be getting paid well in their deal (“Pounds, pounds, getting pounds, they’re getting pounds” etc) but the future tech plans are fascinating too – although much more fascinating if Iconic can work constructively with Universal to ensure the 1960s music is also part of that.
Image by Bradford Timeline (CC BY-NC 2.0)
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thanks for this important bit of information. when i was in high school in the 70’s i had to make my own BB shirt. i had to buy a green hanes t-shirt and use a razor to remove the pocket. then i had to buy a beach boys endless summer decal and have my mom iron it on the shirt.
the beach boys TWICE in the 70’s fumbled the ball when it came to merchandising. in 1971 when rolling stone magazine, which had previously been totally anti-bb, voted the bb the band of the year, the beach boys should have rolled out merch with their long haired, bearded look. they didn’t. then in 1974 with the massive success of endless summer and the nostalgia boom, not to mention the just around the corner bicentennial which suddenly made it cool to be american again, they should have rolled out merch with their clean cut, classic look. they didn’t. they have never corrected this mistake in the DECADES since. for about a decade now i have found it near impossible to find official bb merchandise. in fact mostly what can be found in related to pet sounds, which reinforces the notion that pet sounds is the only good bb album. in the future i hope to see bumper stickers, pins, buttons, shirts, beach balls, EVERYTHING with a green background and the yellow cooper style letter font (but no mention of pet sounds) EVERYWHERE!!!