Report: Pink Floyd Cashes Out After Decades of Infighting

Sources say Sony is buying back catalog, image rights for $400M
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 2, 2024 6:10 PM CDT
Report: Pink Floyd Sells Rights to Sony for $400M
David Gilmour performs in the ancient Roman amphitheater at Pompeii, Italy, Thursday, July 7, 2016.   (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The surviving members of Pink Floyd have put aside their differences to score a massive payday. Sources tell the Financial Times and Variety that the band has agreed to sell the rights to its music, name, and likeness to Sony for $400 million. The sale follows more than 40 years of infighting between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, with drummer Nick Mason apparently caught in the middle. "It's really disappointing these rather elderly gentlemen are still at loggerheads," Mason said in 2018. The estates of founding members Syd Barrett, who died in 2006, and Richard Wright, who died in 2008, were also involved in the deal.

In August, Glimour told Rolling Stone that the band was in talks about a possible catalog sale. He said it was his "dream" to be rid of the "decision-making and the arguments that are involved" over things like liner notes in reissues. He said he was interested in a sale not from a "financial standpoint," but "from getting out of the mud bath that it has been for quite a while." The deal is the latest in a line of what the Times calls "heritage" buys by Sony, including the right to the catalogs of Queen, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan.

Rolling Stone notes that the deal gives Sony control of the band's recorded music, as well as things like merchandise and films, but Pink Floyd will keep control of its publishing catalog, with "now apropos lyrics" like "Money/ It's a gas/ Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash." In 2022, sources told Variety that a $500 millon deal was close, but potential buyers were put off by issues including Waters' controversial remarks about Israel and Ukraine. Last year, Polly Samson, Gilmour's wife, called Waters antisemitic—and a "Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac." (More Pink Floyd stories.)

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