BMG Deepens Its Jet Bet With a Deal for the Band’s Publishing Rights

BMG has added Jet’s publishing interests to its holdings, extending a relationship that already brought the Australian rock band’s recorded catalog under the same corporate umbrella in 2023.

Announced Wednesday, May 13, the deal covers the publishing stakes of three of Jet’s four original members: Nic Cester, who handles vocals and guitar; Cam Muncey, also on vocals and guitar; and bassist Mark Wilson. Founding drummer Chris Cester is not currently in the band.

For BMG, it is a neat consolidation of a catalog that has long lived beyond the original moment of early-2000s rock revivalism. The company had already described its 2023 purchase of Jet’s recordings catalog as a “landmark deal,” and this new transaction pushes the rest of the group’s core rights into the same place. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We’ve loved working with BMG,” frontman and co-founder Nic Cester says, “and we’re excited to extend that partnership to the publishing side, so these songs can keep finding new audiences in the years ahead.”

Jet emerged in the late 1990s and became part of the early-2000s wave of Australian bands moving internationally alongside The Vines and Avalanches. Their run was short by the standards of classic rock mythology, but the records landed hard: three studio albums, all of them top 40 entries on the Billboard 200. Get Born reached No. 26 in 2003, Shine On peaked at No. 16 in 2006, and Shaka Rock hit No. 27 in 2009.

Get Born remains the group’s defining commercial statement. It is certified nine-times platinum in Australia, won six ARIA Awards, and is recognized as one of the five best-selling Australian rock albums of all time. The publishing package includes the songs that made that reputation travel well beyond home turf, among them Billboard Hot 100 entries “Look What You’ve Done” and “Cold Hard Bitch,” plus “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” the band’s signature track and the song that was also used in Apple’s 2004 iPod campaign.

Those placements still matter, and not just as nostalgia. BMG says Jet’s career record sales now top 6.5 million worldwide, a figure that helps explain why catalog ownership around the band has become such a clear strategic priority.

Heath Johns, president of Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia at BMG, who negotiated the deal, framed Jet as one of the clearest examples of an Australian act cutting through globally in the early 2000s. “There are few Australian bands with songs as internationally recognizable as Jet,” he said. “Jet was the Australian export story of the early 2000s, carrying the torch for a new generation of rock ’n’ roll storytellers. Jet’s enduring success is illustrated on stage at festivals and headline shows around the world, on radio, across streaming, and through a global sync track record of the rarest order. BMG is honored that Jet has placed their faith in us to help ensure these songs continue to find new audiences for many years to come.”

Jet was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2023 and continues to tour internationally.