There are so many artists in the last few years who have sold off their catalogs. Leave it to Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider to explain why. Appearing on the New Theory Podcast Dee Said:
“When you are getting your royalty checks every year, and they’re big — I’m in the 50% tax bracket between state [and federal taxes] — so they’re chopping off 50% . But capital gains on a sale of property is, like, 15, 20%… They give you 10 years’ worth of royalties in advance, or whatever that number is. When you do the math, you look at it and you go, ‘Okay, I’m gonna save 30% on taxes.’ It’s not even guaranteed that 10 years from now… I believe these songs will still have value. They’re taking a chance. And I can take this chunk of change and I can invest it and secure it and make it my retirement fund, which I did.
So it goes from being a thing that comes in and you’re getting half of it taken away by the government every six months to a thing, guaranteed, ‘Okay, I know I can work with this.’ So a lot of people are doing it for just that reason.”
