On Friday morning MBW sent out a breaking news alert: we’d heard Pink Floyd were in talks with Sony Music to sell their catalog for a sum believed to be in the region of GBP £400 million.
A few hours later the Financial Times further substantiated the story, suggesting, via its own sources, that the deal’s value is USD $500 million.
The prospective acquisition is believed to encompass the band’s recorded music catalog, plus neighboring rights and ‘name and likeness’ rights.
But how has Sony (or any other prospective buyer) reached this reported half-billion-dollar price tag?
The best way to determine the value of Pink Floyd’s recorded music catalog, of course, is to understand what it’s already earning.
MBW has unearthed annual accounts filed by two UK-based companies owned by Pink Floyd that allow us to do just that.
The first thing to know: Pink Floyd own their masters, but partner with recorded music companies to license and/or distribute their music around the world.
After their record distributors/licensing partners have taken their share, the proceeds from sales/streams of the band’s music 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 USD $50.24 million.
According to an annual report filed in March by Pink Floyd Music Limited, the company generated annual revenues of £30.8 million (USD $38.3m) in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2023.
That represented a 48% YoY increase from the £20.8 million the company reported for the 2022 fiscal year, according to the financial report filed with the UK’s Companies House.
Pink Floyd Music Limited counts all three surviving band members as directors, including Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason.
According to the company’s annual report, “the principal activity of the company is the sale of physical and digital recorded music relating to the masters it owns through its distributors and licensees”.
The company adds later in the annual report that it “sells physical and digital recorded music through its distributors and licensees, bears the costs relating to those sales (principally distribution, manufacturing and copyright) and then makes payments for services provided to the principals as well as certain third-party producers”.
A separate annual report for a company called Pink Floyd (1987) Limited was also filed in March, also for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023.
Pink Floyd (1987) Limited only counts David Gilmour and Nick Mason as directors. As the name suggests, the company was incorporated in 1987 (two years after Roger Waters left the band).
According to this company’s annual report for the year ended June 30 2023, it generated annual revenues of GPB £9.59 million, which converts to USD $11.9 million at the average annual exchange rate for 2023.
That represents a 14% YoY decrease from the GBP £11.15 million the company reported for the 2022 fiscal year.
According to Pink Floyd (1987) Limited’s annual report, the company’s revenue generating activities are also related to recorded music, plus merch.
The company confirms that it “owns certain Pink Floyd masters and exploits them by sales of physical and digital recorded music as well as merchandise through its distributors and licensees”.
In 2022, when rumors first surfaced that Pink Floyd’s catalog was up for sale, and that the band’s team was looking for north of GBP £400 million for it, MBW sources suggested that the deal would include recorded music rights and ‘name and likeness’ rights, but NOT music publishing rights.
That still appears to be the case, according to our sources.
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.
News of Sony’s talks to acquire Pink Floyd’s catalog arrives two months after 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.
Apollo’s announcement arrived in the same month MBW’s sources told us that Apollo was a co-investor in Sony’s deal to acquire the catalog of another legendary rock band, Queen, for approximately GBP £1 billion.
Sony is understood to be buying Queen’s global music publishing rights, their ‘name and likeness’ rights, plus their recorded music interests — including their recording copyrights outside of North America, where their masters are owned by Disney Music Group.
(Sony already administers Queen’s publishing rights, while the band’s recorded music is currently globally distributed via Universal Music Group.)
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.
All GBP-USD currency conversions in this analysis are based on the annual average rate for 2023 as published by the IRS.Music Business Worldwide
