GRAB THAT CASH WITH BOTH HANDS AND MAKE A STASH: Pink Floyd Sells Music Rights to Sony for $400 Million.

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.

Billboard asks: Could the Floyd’s publishing rights be up next? “While Luminate doesn’t track global album sales, Pink Floyd’s on-demand global streams averaged 2.37 billion over the last three years. Consequently, if the group owns all of its publishing, Billboard estimates that the band’s recorded masters bring in about $11 million in publishing royalties annually. If the band eventually decides to sell and can achieve a 20-times multiple — the going rate for superstar songwriters — it could bring in another $200 million-plus for the band’s songwriters. In general, music publishing asset trade at a higher multiple than recorded music assets, although the latter is catching up on that front.”

UPDATE: David Gilmour Will “Absolutely Not” Perform with Roger Waters Again. “I tend to steer clear of people who actively support genocidal and autocratic dictators.” “Gilmour and Waters have been at odds for decades. In 2023 alone, Gilmour blasted Waters as a ‘misogynistic, antisemitic, Putin apologist’ and shared a documentary detailing Waters’ alleged antisemitism. The paid last shared the stage together during Roger Waters’ ‘The Wall’ tour in 2011.”