Pink Floyd sell music catalogue to Sony for $400 million

Pink Floyd have reportedly sold their music catalogue to Sony Music Entertainment for $400 million (£301 million).
On Tuesday, editors at The Financial Times reported that the British rock band had agreed to sell their recorded music and name-and-likeness rights to the music giant.
Sources told the outlet that only recorded rights were included in the deal, not for those related to the group’s songwriting as they are held by the individual writers.
They also indicated that owning the band’s likeness will allow Sony bosses to profit from the sale of merchandise and other future projects, such as potential TV shows or films.

Representatives for Pink Floyd and Sony have not yet commented on the report.
Considered the greatest progressive rock band of all time, Pink Floyd was formed in London in 1965.
The original line-up was comprised of Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Richard Wright, with the group’s hit albums including 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, 1977’s Animals, and 1979’s The Wall.

Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Despite a long hiatus and ongoing conflicts between the surviving band members, Gilmour and Mason reformed Pink Floyd in 2022 to release the track Hey, Hey, Rise Up! to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And in August, Gilmour, 78, shared in an interview for Rolling Stone that he wasn’t interested in the music catalogue sale for financial reasons but more “to be rid of the decision making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going”.

In recent years, Sony executives have spent millions of dollars on buying the catalogues of high-profile artists including the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Queen.