The Beach Boys and Building a True Legacy

As reported by Rolling Stone, the Beach Boys have sold a controlling stake in their intellectual property—including their master recordings, a portion of their publishing, the Beach Boys brand, and their memorabilia—to a new company created by music mogul Irving Azoff called Iconic Artist Group. Elizabeth Collings, co-President of Iconic Artist Group, is quoted as stating: “A lot of artists are getting to a point in life where they want to think about estate planning, they want to think about the future of their legacy.” This is true. A lot of artists, particularly heritage acts like the Beach Boys, are thinking about their estate planning—after all, they have families and complex financial concerns—and they are also thinking about their legacies, but the two are not the same. Estate planning focuses on what happens to your “estate,” defined as the property and rights your own when you die, and typically focuses on the preservation and management of those assets for multiple generations with what has become a very heavy focus on tax planning. Legacy planning, on the other hand, focuses on what happens to your “legacy,” a term that has become widely used to mean a lot of things by a lot of different people in a lot of different industries.

If you want to achieve the lasting success of 200-year-old iconic French brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton, a goal mentioned by Iconic’s CEO Oliver Chastan, you have to view legacy as social and cultural impact.

When financial and legal professionals use the term “legacy,” many are simply referring to a financial legacy, or the hopeful creation of “generational wealth.” Others, particularly those in the entertainment space, use it to mean how an artist will be remembered. At Spotlight, we use the term “legacy” to refer to an individual’s impact on society and culture. How legacy is defined impacts your planning goals and, ultimately, your continued success. If you want to achieve the lasting success of 200-year-old iconic French brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton, a goal mentioned by Iconic’s CEO Oliver Chastan, you have to view legacy as social and cultural impact.

There is nothing wrong with capitalizing on the commercial opportunities surrounding the Beach Boys’ intellectual property, particularly when those opportunities are authentic to who the Beach Boys are/were as artists. However, focusing solely on the works they have created has limited potential because those works become increasingly less valuable over time from a mainstream media and pop culture consumption perspective, while becoming increasingly more valuable in an historic context. The problem is that history rarely continues to drive commerce and instead becomes the stuff talked about on museum walls. Historic cultural relevance does not a 200-year-old-brand make.

In order to build true commercial sustainability, like any great brand, individual artists and groups like the Beach Boys need to look to their core purpose and values and cast those towards the future.

Expanding the Beach Boys’ “brand” beyond traditional music revenue streams and into things like restaurants, Broadway plays and even theme parks might be an excellent idea in terms of creatively monetizing the Beach Boys’ existing intellectual property, but it still has its limitation because those projects ultimately still focus solely on the Beach Boys. Such ideas continue to look towards the past as opposed to the future. While initially exciting and lucrative, you will eventually run out of ideas and face the continuing risk that no matter what you do, the Beach Boys’ works—their intellectual property and every new property derived therefrom—will eventually run out of commercial steam and no longer be a viable source of revenue. In other words, the harsh reality is that while artists like the Beach Boy will always remain historically relevant, they will most likely become commercially irrelevant at some point. Music, at least from a revenue-generating perspective, is rarely timeless.

In order to build true commercial sustainability, like any great brand, individual artists and groups like the Beach Boys need to look to their core purpose and values and cast those towards the future. How may people buying an Hermès handbag or bracelet know who Thierry Hermès is? Few, if any, I guarantee you. The continued success of iconic brands like Hermès has nothing to do with the creators of those brands. They have moved past the individual and into a new, limitless stratosphere based on the timeless purpose and principles that individual stood for. This is where the music industry cannot get out of its own way. What musicians and musical groups stand for, their purpose, is not just the music they create. Music is merely one embodiment of a message, a purpose. It is one form of artistic expression that represents something much bigger, much deeper. Instead of trying to turn that one form of expression into a million different things, the focus needs to be on conveying their authentic message, their purpose, in new commercially viable ways.  

In the best-case scenario, the Beach Boys as a group should be viewed as a one of many brands embodying the collective purpose, mission and vision of its members. Turning the Beach Boys into a “lifestyle brand” would be the ultimate exercise in maximizing that brand’s potential by elevating it beyond music and across multiple industry verticals. Not a bad idea, but also maybe not the best. A band is like a family, and a family is not a brand. Brands are commodities that can be bought, sold and invested in. Families, on the other hand, while capable of producing works and building companies and brands together, are not themselves commodities. The Beach Boys are best known for creating music. That was the one thing they created together. Music was the form of artistic expression they chose to communicate their authentic message, their vision, their collective purpose. Understanding that purpose is the first step in building a true legacy.

What musicians and musical groups stand for, their purpose, is not just the music they create. Music is merely one embodiment of a message, a purpose. It is one form of artistic expression that represents something much bigger, much deeper.

The Beach Boys are not Jimmy Buffett (no disrespect to the Margaritaville King). They stood for innovation and experimentation. They inspired other artists, from the Beatles to punk rock bands like the Ramones. That is not something you can sip at beachfront tiki bar. The challenge with the Beach Boys (and any other heritage musical act, for that matter) is thinking beyond music and beyond the artist(s) behind the music. Rather than trying to continually shine the spotlight on what has already been created and who created it, we must see the artist or group and their works as the light source and seek to cast their light—their broader purpose and impact—on the world stage. That is how you continue to reach and build new audiences. That is how you build a true, lasting legacy.