The deal is done: Pink Floyd has this week agreed to sell their recorded music catalog to Sony Music in an agreement worth approximately USD $400 million, according to sources.
The transaction is understood to include Floyd’s recordings catalog, plus neighboring rights, plus ‘name and likeness’ rights. It does not include publishing rights.
The news was first reported today (October 1) by the Financial Times.
The news comes after Sony reportedly completed the acquisition of a career-spanning set of rights for another legendary band, Queen, for over $1 billion, earlier this year.
That Queen deal included publishing rights, ‘name and likeness’ rights, plus recorded music rights outside of North America.
As MBW revealed in September, the recorded music royalties for Pink Floyd’s music currently flows into two UK companies: Pink Floyd (1987) Limited and Pink Floyd Music Limited.
The former appears to collect revenues for the band’s recorded music catalog following Roger Waters’ departure in 1985; the latter collects revenues for music recorded before Waters’ departure.
Combined, these two firms generated revenues of GBP £40.399 million during their fiscal year ended June 30 2023. That converts to approximately USD $50 million.
Pink Floyd’s catalog first went up for sale in 2022, when MBW sources suggested (correctly) that the deal would include recorded music rights and ‘name and likeness’ rights, but not music publishing rights.
At the time, reports suggested that the catalog had attracted interest from potential buyers like Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, BMG, Hipgnosis, Concord, Primary Wave, and private equity group Blackstone.
In July, Apollo Global Management confirmed that it was the lead investor in a USD $700 million “capital solution” for Sony Music Group intended to fund music industry investments.
Sony has teamed up with outside capital for catalog investments before.
Sony’s ~$550 million acquisition of Bruce Springsteen’s publishing and recorded music catalog in 2021 was (on the publishing side) part-financed by Eldridge Industries.Music Business Worldwide