Legendary Kiss Sells Music and Brand Rights for Over $300 Million to Former ABBA Member's Company

The famous rock band Kiss has sold its back catalogue of songs, brand, stage image and intellectual property to a Swedish music investor for more than $300 million, the BBC reports.

Stockholm-based Pophouse Entertainment became the owner.

Although the details of the deal with Kiss were not disclosed, it is similar to the deal with the British band Genesis, but less than the previous sale of Michael Jackson's works worth $600 million.

In fact, this sale marks the end of the band's live performances during the End of the Road world tour.

Pophouse will own not only the rights to the music, but also the entire Kiss brand, including intellectual property. This will allow the Swedish firm to create future content using AI.

The company, which previously collaborated with Kiss on a digital avatar project last December, also created Abba Voyage concerts using a similar principle.

Kiss was founded in 1973 by lead singers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. The first line-up, which also included Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, became known for its iconic face paint.

Over the past 50 years, Kiss has sold about 100 million records.

Simmons, who sang and played bass for the band, along with his co-founder and co-vocalist Paul Stanley, will continue to be actively involved in the ongoing development of the brand and the artificial intelligence-generated material contained in the band's robot library.

He described the ongoing relationship as that of a mother and child.

"A mother sees her child grow up, get married or whatever, but you never get rid of the mother," he said. "You can't just hand that over to someone else, even though we have a common vision."

Kiss are known as prolific marketers of branded products. So Mr Simmons said they have put their brand on 5,000 products, from coffee to condoms and even coffins.

"Crack Kiss is probably not a good idea. No Kiss cigarettes. But the rest of the world is open, so why not? Branding makes things fun," he added.