After years of false alarms, Pink Floyd have settled on a $400 million USD deal with Sony Music.
The band has sold their recorded music and name-and-likeness rights to Sony in its entirety – essentially everything Pink Floyd but the songwriting and publishing rights.
While negotiations started in 2022, the final deal will see classics like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall fall out of Pink Floyd’s hands.
Sony will have access to any merchandising and theatrical rights, giving them the power, if desired, to make “potential movie and TV spin-offs.”
It hasn’t come long after Sony Music dished out a whopping $1.27 billion for Queen’s music catalogue and likeness rights earlier this year.
In response to the question of why the band decided to sell, guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour shared that, “My reason for wanting to do it is I don’t want to burden my kids with that whole legacy.”
“To be rid of the decision-making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going is my dream,” he said. “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 deal is one of the largest we’ve seen in years, and puts to a close decades of conflict between the band members, most notably between songwriters David Gilmour and Roger Waters.
When asked in September whether a reunion between the two would be possible, Gilmour answered with an “unequivocal no”.
He did, however, hint at the possibility of a future reunion with iconic drummer Nick Mason.
On the feud between his fellow ex-bandmates, Mason said, “It’s really disappointing these rather elderly gentlemen are still at loggerheads.”
So while a friendship between Gilmour and Waters is likely to never re-emerge, the deal will allow the band to finally and peacefully part ways.
