A few weeks ago David Gilmour confirmed in this interview that negotiations were underway to sell Pink Floyd's catalogue, even if he did not willingly participate in the negotiations. «My dream» he said «is not to be involved in decisions like these and the discussions that arise from them. And then I don't care from a financial point of view. I'm only interested in getting the thing out of the quagmire it's been in for a while.”
According to the Financial Timesthe deal would finally emerge from the quagmire and Pink Floyd would sell the catalog to Sony Music for $400 million, a remarkable if not record-breaking sum. In the case of Bruce Springsteen, for example, there was talk of 500 million, in that of Queen a billion dollars. In July, writes the Financial Timesthe private equity group Apollo financed Sony's rights acquisition activity with $700 million.
According to the newspaper, the agreement relating to Pink Floyd provides for the transfer of recordings and images, and therefore also relating to the production and sale of merchandise and the creation, for example, of a biopic or an official docuseries, but not of editions . There has been talk about it since at least 2022.
One after another, rock greats are handing over the rights to the master recordings and the use of their songs, and more. It is a phenomenon that began years ago, when we wrote about it in this article.
