Cooking Vinyl Publishing has signed Jaz Coleman, founder and frontman of Killing Joke, to a worldwide publishing agreement in collaboration with Believe Music Publishing. The deal covers songs from across Coleman's solo, orchestral and recent Killing Joke career, according to Music Week.
What makes the signing unusual is the shape of the catalogue it wraps around. Coleman's publishing history now spans a band formed in 1978, two symphonic albums recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a Doors concerto, a commissioned opera, and a Pink Floyd arrangement premiered in Geneva to a sold-out audience. Few publishing deals cover both Wardance and a Royal Opera House commission.
For writers watching the trade from the outside, the deal is a reminder that a career's value compounds in strange ways. The songs written in one decade can keep signing cheques in another, and the agreements that govern them — who controls what, worldwide, for how long — matter as much as the writing itself. That is as true for a book deal as a song deal; our publishing news coverage follows those mechanics closely.
What does the deal actually cover?
The agreement is worldwide and collaborative: Cooking Vinyl Publishing signs Coleman with Believe Music Publishing as partner. The catalogue in play runs across three bodies of work — Coleman's solo material, his orchestral output, and recent Killing Joke songs. Music Week did not report the financial terms, the term length, or the split of rights between the partners, so any read on the money is speculation and stays out of this piece.
Coleman's own framing, quoted by Music Week, leaned on the company rather than the contract: "Anyone who knows anything about Cooking Vinyl (whether it be the record company or publishing) is aware that it is operated by individuals with a fanatical blood-red passion for music which dramatically differentiates it from other companies." He called the signing the most exciting time of his career and said his goal is "to musically capture the zeitgeist of this unique moment in history with my remaining years."
How long has this catalogue been compounding?
The timeline tells most of the story. Killing Joke was founded in 1978, which puts the band's catalogue at well over four decades old at the moment of signing. Its best-known songs — Love Like Blood, Eighties, Requiem and Wardance — date from the band's early and middle periods, and they keep earning their keep through influence: Metallica, Nirvana and Jimmy Page are among the famous fans the band has accumulated. Page presented Killing Joke with Classic Rock's Innovator Award in 2010.
That 2010 date recurs. In the same year, France made Coleman a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Eleven years later, in 2021, the University of Gloucestershire awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Music. The honours bracket the period in which Coleman built the orchestral half of the catalogue — the half that makes this publishing deal hard to categorise.
The orchestral ledger
Coleman's classical output, as documented by Music Week, includes:
- Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd and Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin, released with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
- An orchestral Doors concerto featuring Nigel Kennedy and the Prague Symphony Orchestra
- A first large-scale opera, commissioned by the Royal Opera House
- An arrangement of Sarah Brightman's album Harem
- A new orchestral arrangement of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, premiered by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva to a sold-out audience
The most recent dates matter most for the deal's timing. The Geneva premiere is described as the band's most recent milestone, and the Athens State Orchestra have just announced a special performance in Greece this November. Coleman arrives at the signing table with live performances already scheduled — a position most catalogues take years to reach.
What the partners said, and what it signals
Ryan Farley, managing director of Cooking Vinyl Publishing, made the genre-spanning case explicitly: "Jaz is a genuine one-off. Very few artists have reshaped a genre and then gone on to hold their own in the concert hall. His songs with Killing Joke have influenced generations of musicians, and his orchestral work is every bit as ambitious." He also noted the deal includes Carla at North and South Artists alongside the Believe partnership.
Peter McCamley, VP publishing at Believe Music, framed the value in the same two-catalogue terms: "Jaz is a legend, and it's an honour to represent him with our partners at Cooking Vinyl Publishing. His influence runs through decades of music, and we're excited to see what comes next."
Read together, the quotes describe a publishing bet on longevity rather than a new release. The catalogue's earning power sits in the past — the songs, the arrangements, the commissions — while the forward-looking element is Coleman's stated intention to keep writing. It is the same logic that makes a backlist valuable in book publishing, where a title's decades of steady sales can outweigh a launch week; we looked at that arithmetic in How Publishers Decide Print Runs.
Why it matters for working writers
The lesson in the deal is about rights, not fame. Coleman's catalogue earned a worldwide signing because it was built across formats — band songs, orchestral work, arrangements, an opera — and because the work stayed in circulation long enough to attract new partners. Whoever controls those rights shapes what happens next. The same principle runs through the agreements writers sign every day, from the split an agent negotiates to the terms in a first contract; What a Literary Agent Actually Does for Their 15 Percent covers the book-side version of that question.
What remains unknown is the substance behind the announcement: no financial terms, no term length, and no detail on how Cooking Vinyl and Believe divide the catalogue between them. Music Week's report is the sole source on the deal, and this piece sticks to what it documents. The next hard date on Coleman's calendar is the Athens performance in November — the first public test of what the "exciting new phase," in Farley's words, actually produces.
