Rights to 10% of Led Zeppelin back catalogue up for sale
Although Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones aren’t involved, ten per cent of the Led Zeppelin catalogue has now been put on the market. The move comes following several similar high-profile deals over the past few years. Other artists to have sold the rights to their music include Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Justin Bieber.
To put things into perspective, in December 2021, Springsteen sold his masters and publishing rights to Sony Music Group for over $550million. Therefore, even just ten per cent of Led Zeppelin’s catalogue is looking at a rather handsome figure.
The ten per cent up for grabs is currently owned by Helen Grant, the daughter of Led Zeppelin’s former manager Peter Grant. Following Peter’s death in 1995, Helen and her brother Warren Grant each inherited half of their father’s 20 per cent share in the catalogue.
Helen is conducting the sale through the London-based firm New Media Law. According to several reports, Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group are among several companies to have registered their interest in the product prior to Helen’s engagement with New Media Law.
“Her father managed Led Zeppelin and owned 20% of the Zeppelin companies,” Ian Penman, a spokesperson for New Media Law, said in a new statement to Music Business Worldwide. “So [the deal] is quite rare in that respect because it includes trademarks. It includes the name. The name, Led Zeppelin, is owned by a company that Helen co-owns.”
Penman explained that Helen “considered selling the rights earlier this year” and that “a mutual friend suggested to her that she might need the service of a lawyer to help her.”
Adding: “Fortuitously, he recommended me.”
“We immediately got on. I was a big Zeppelin fan growing up,” Penman revealed. “When I was 17, I had gone to see Zeppelin play at Knebworth, which was the last concert they played with John Bonham [in the UK], and she was at the same gig, a couple of years younger than me, but was backstage with her dad. We both talked about what an incredible concert it was and how we were both extremely lucky to have been at it. So we had this kind of mutual bonding on that.”
Penman said he “persuaded [Helen Grant] to go public” with the sale because “we want to make sure that everyone that’s out there that might be interested is aware of this because it’s such an iconic [offer].”
“[Deals like this] just never happen really. And especially on one of your all-time favourite bands. It’s a dream world to be involved with the story at all,” he concluded.
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