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Pink Floyd have reportedly sold their back catalog to Sony for $400 million. According to Music Business Worldwide, the deal includes the band’s recording catalogue, neighboring rights, and name and likeness rights, but not publishing rights. As of now Pink Floyd's recorded music royalties are managed by two companies—Pink Floyd (1987) Limited and Pink Floyd Music Limited—with the latter collecting revenue before Roger Waters' departure from the band in 1985. The two companies generated a combined total of $50 million in revenue during the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2023.
The news comes after David Gilmour said it would be a "dream" to sell Pink Floyd's music catalog in a recent interview. "To be rid of the decision-making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going is my dream,” the guitarist said just last month. “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" he's referring to most likely involves his tumultuous relationship with former band member Roger Waters. The two have grown apart for decades but things publicly came to a head last year when Gilmour accused Waters of being antisemitic after his wife Polly Samson slammed Waters on Twitter, writing: “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
Gilmour then quoted her tweet with his approval, writing: “Every word demonstrably true.”
Waters refuted the claims, calling them "incendiary and wildly inaccurate.
The acquisition isn't Sony's only large purchase this year, either. Over the summer, the company purchased Queen's music catalog for a record-breaking $1.27 billion.