Pink Floyd are in “advanced talks” with Sony Music to sell their back catalog for about $500 million, the Financial Times reports.
According to the Financial Times, the sale would include hits from the past 50 years like “Money,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “Another Brick in the Wall.” However, the report cautions that “there is no guarantee of an agreement this time given the past problems.”
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The update comes after David Gilmour recently told Rolling Stone it would be a “dream” to sell Pink Floyd’s catalog and get out of the “mud bath” — likely referencing his contentious relationship with former bandmate Roger Waters. In just one relatively recent example of their decades-long tension, Gilmour described Waters as a “misogynistic, antisemitic, Putin apologist” in 2023.
Pink Floyd began exploring a catalog sale in 2022, but those discussions fell apart due to band in-fighting and Waters’ incendiary comments about Ukraine and Israel. At the time, Sony was among the prospective buyers, which included Warner Music, BMG, and Hipgnosis.
Sony Music has a history of purchasing legacy artist’s catalogs for enormous dollar amounts. Recent examples include a reported $500 million for Bruce Springsteen’s catalog in 2021 and $1.27 billion for Queen’s catalog and likeness rights earlier this year.
While Pink Floyd’s catalog sale inches forward, Gilmour recently dropped his new solo album, Luck and Strange, which he’ll be supporting with a limited tour of the US, Europe, and the UK (get tickets here). While promoting the LP, he described it as “the best album I’ve made in all those years since 1973 when The Dark Side of the Moon came out.”