With the upcoming activities and all, I thought it'd be interesting to find out who owns what exactly.
Artists sell their 'rights' all the time, but what do they actually sell?
Depending on the specific terms in the contract, it is usually publishing rights, and ultimately that means the party that owns those, gets to decide what is being produced and sold.
Considering Rush sold those rights back in 2014, all the 'umpteenth' year issues, have been sorted by the 'new' company that bought those rights for (what 'sources' estimate') around 25 million US Dollars.
In actual fact: the 'band' (whatever that's worth these days) has little to no say on this.
Yes, they make money most likely (master or writing credits), no they don't get to decide whether there will be another issue of A Show of hands.
Digging a bit I found company Ole bought the rights (or rather the company that owned those rights: Core Music), and they cleverly rebranded to Anthem Entertainment, suggesting that it is still the band that is in control.
What I find interesting is, what will happen to newly recorded music? Of course, the band holds power over the performances (unlike Kiss who sold their entire brand for 350 million Dollars), and may hold power over the recordings they make of those shows, but what about the publishing of those recordings? Surely there's an agreement in place, no doubt.
Still, just being curious I guess. 10 years down the line, having cashed in, will they make any money from material they would publish from these shows? Not as much as we all think I suppose, which may answer the question why the shows are so ridiculously overpriced..