After years of false starts, the iconic British rock band Pink Floyd has agreed to sell their recorded-music and name-and-likeness rights to Sony Music for approximately $400 million, sources confirm to Variety.
The deal, one of the largest of many in recent years, apparently has finally concluded despite decades of ongoing infighting and bitter words between the bandmembers, notably chief songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour; also involved are drummer Nick Mason and the estates of keyboardist Richard Wright and founding singer-songwriter Roger “Syd” Barrett. The deal comprises recorded-music rights but not songwriting, which is held by the individual writers, as well as name-and-likeness, which includes merchandise, theatrical and similar rights. While Pink Floyd was famously anonymous as personalities, presumably most if not all of the iconic artwork on their albums, which was largely designed by the British firm Hipgnosis, is included.
While reps for the bandmembers and Sony declined or did not respond to requests for comment, the Financial Times, which first reported this latest iteration of the sale, wrote of it as fact and sources familiar with the situation confirmed the deal to Variety.
On a purely business level, the Pink Floyd recorded-music catalog, not to mention its merchandising rights, is one of the most valuable in contemporary music, with classic albums like “Dark Side of the Moon,” “The Wall,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Animals,” “Meddle,” “Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” “More” and more.
Sony has spent more than a billion dollars on catalogs from Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Queen’s non-North American rights in the past few years (with backing from investment firms like Eldridge Industries), and has never officially comment on the deals. Variety and others reported just two weeks ago that the Pink Floyd transaction was nearing closure.
The catalog had been in play for several years with a reported asking price of $500 million, and the group was close to a deal in 2022, but the bitter infighting between the band’s members — primarily over main songwriter Roger Waters’ controversial political statements against Israel and Ukraine, and in favor of Russia — have complicated the deal enormously and scared off a number of suitors. There seems little question that Waters’ incendiary comments, which have made him a pariah from all but his biggest fans and cost him his solo record deal, devalued the catalog.
Surprisingly, the deal concludes as Israel’s multi-front wars in the Middle East are reaching a new peak of violence, which opens Sony up to a firestorm of criticism for paying such a hefty sum to Waters, who has vehemently denied that he is antisemitic but has been quite unambiguous about his fierce criticism of the governments of Israel, Ukraine and the United States, and his strong statements in support of Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Among many other provocative statements, Waters has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “not unprovoked.” (Waters’ 2022 concerts in Poland were canceled over his comments about neighboring Ukraine.) “You are anti-Semitic to your rotten core,” Gilmour’s wife, novelist Polly Samson, told Waters on Twitter, amid other colorful comments; “Every word demonstrably true,” Gilmour added. Waters refuted their comments as “incendiary and wildly inaccurate.”
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,” which he described as “my dream.”
The companies that were close to a deal with the group in 2022 — said to be Hipgnosis, Warner Music and BMG — have all had leadership changes since then (and earlier this year, BMG dropped Waters from its roster as a solo artist). Waters’ comments were a major factor in the deals falling apart, although a variety of other factors — including rising interest rates, tax issues and the sinking value of the British pound — also played a role.
Caught in the middle of the dispute is Mason, who said in 2018, “It’s really disappointing these rather elderly gentlemen are still at loggerheads.”
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