Pink Floyd to sell music rights to Sony for €362 million

Legendary British rock band Pink Floyd have agreed to sell their back catalogue and name-and-likeness rights for $400million (€362m) in a deal with Sony Music.

The deal, first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by Variety, is one of the largest and most valuable in recent years – considering the band recorded classic albums like ‘Dark Side of the Moon‘, ‘The Wall’, ‘Wish You Were Here’, ‘Animals’, and ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’.

The deal comprises recorded-music rights but not songwriting, which is held by the individual writers. The name-and-likeness includes merchandise, theatrical and similar rights.

The deal has apparently concluded despite decades of infighting between Pink Floyd’s bandmembers, notably Roger Waters and David Gilmour.

Gilmour recently told Rolling Stone that he was interested in a sale less for financial reasons than “to be rid of the decision making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going.” He added: “I am not interested in that from a financial standpoint. I’m only interested in it from getting out of the mud bath that it has been for quite a while.”

The “mud bath” most likely refers to the tensions between him and Waters, which came to a head recently when Gilmour claimed Waters was an antisemite.

Last year, Waters was investigated by Berlin police over a Nazi-style uniform he wore at a concert in the German capital. He won a legal battle allowing him to perform a concert in Frankfurt after the city attempted to cancel the event amid accusations of antisemitism.

Waters has always denied these accusations.

Two years ago, Variety reported that Pink Floyd had been looking to sell their recorded music for as much as $500m. Apparently, potential buyers were put off after a controversial 2022 interview with Waters in Rolling Stone, in which he made inflammatory comments about Israel and stated that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was “not unprovoked”.

This year, it was reported that Waters was dropped as a solo artist by music rights company BMG over his comments.

The news of Pink Floyd selling their back catalogue comes after Sony acquired Queen’s catalogue for more than €1 billion earlier this year, and spending more on catalogues from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.

Additional sources • The Financial Times, Variety, Rolling Stone