On Friday morning MBW despatched out a breaking information alert: we’d heard Pink Floyd have been in talks with Sony Music to promote their catalog for a sum believed to be within the area of GBP £400 million.
Just a few hours later the Monetary Instances additional substantiated the story, suggesting, by way of its personal sources, that the deal’s worth is USD $500 million.
The possible acquisition is believed to embody the band’s recorded music catalog, plus neighboring rights and ‘title and likeness’ rights.
However how has Sony (or every other potential purchaser) reached this reported half-billion-dollar price ticket?
One of the best ways to find out the worth of Pink Floyd’s recorded music catalog, in fact, is to know what it’s already incomes.
MBW has unearthed annual accounts filed by two UK-based firms owned by Pink Floyd that enable us to do exactly that.
The very first thing to know: Pink Floyd personal their masters, however companion with recorded music firms to license and/or distribute their music all over the world.
After their document distributors/licensing companions have taken their share, the proceeds from gross sales/streams of the band’s music flows into two UK firms: Pink Floyd (1987) Restricted and Pink Floyd Music Restricted.
The previous seems to gather revenues for the band’s recorded music catalog following Roger Waters’ departure in 1985; the latter collects revenues for music recorded earlier than Waters’ departure.
Mixed, these two companies generated revenues of GBP £40.399 million throughout their fiscal yr ended June 30 2023. That converts to USD $50.24 million.
In response to an annual report filed in March by Pink Floyd Music Restricted, the corporate generated annual revenues of £30.8 million (USD $38.3m) in its fiscal yr ended June 30, 2023.
That represented a 48% YoY improve from the £20.8 million the corporate reported for the 2022 fiscal yr, in response to the monetary report filed with the UK’s Corporations Home.
Pink Floyd Music Restricted counts all three surviving band members as administrators, together with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason.
In response to the corporate’s annual report, “the principal exercise of the corporate is the sale of bodily and digital recorded music referring to the masters it owns via its distributors and licensees”.
The corporate provides later within the annual report that it “sells bodily and digital recorded music via its distributors and licensees, bears the prices referring to these gross sales (principally distribution, manufacturing and copyright) after which makes funds for providers supplied to the principals in addition to sure third-party producers”.
A separate annual report for a corporation known as Pink Floyd (1987) Restricted was additionally filed in March, additionally for the fiscal yr ended June 30, 2023.
Pink Floyd (1987) Restricted solely counts David Gilmour and Nick Mason as administrators. Because the title suggests, the corporate was integrated in 1987 (two years after Roger Waters left the band).
In response to this firm’s annual report for the yr ended June 30 2023, it generated annual revenues of GPB £9.59 million, which converts to USD $11.9 million on the common annual trade charge for 2023.
That represents a 14% YoY lower from the GBP £11.15 million the corporate reported for the 2022 fiscal yr.
In response to Pink Floyd (1987) Restricted’s annual report, the corporate’s income producing actions are additionally associated to recorded music, plus merch.
The corporate confirms that it “owns sure Pink Floyd masters and exploits them by gross sales of bodily and digital recorded music in addition to merchandise via its distributors and licensees”.
In 2022, when rumors first surfaced that Pink Floyd’s catalog was up on the market, and that the band’s group was on the lookout for north of GBP £400 million for it, MBW sources advised that the deal would come with recorded music rights and ‘title and likeness’ rights, however NOT music publishing rights.
That also seems to be the case, in response to our sources.
On the time, reviews advised that the catalog had attracted curiosity from potential patrons like Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, BMG, Hipgnosis, Harmony, Main Wave, and personal fairness group Blackstone.
Information of Sony’s talks to accumulate Pink Floyd’s catalog arrives two months after Apollo International Administration confirmed that it was the lead investor in a USD $700 million “capital resolution” for Sony Music Group supposed to fund music business investments.
Apollo’s announcement arrived in the identical month MBW’s sources instructed us that Apollo was a co-investor in Sony’s deal to accumulate the catalog of one other legendary rock band, Queen, for about GBP £1 billion.
Sony is known to be shopping for Queen’s international music publishing rights, their ‘title and likeness’ rights, plus their recorded music pursuits — together with their recording copyrights outdoors of North America, the place their masters are owned by Disney Music Group.
(Sony already administers Queen’s publishing rights, whereas the band’s recorded music is at the moment globally distributed by way of Common Music Group.)
Sony has teamed up with outdoors capital for catalog investments earlier than.
Sony’s ~$550 million acquisition of Bruce Springsteen’s publishing and recorded music catalog in 2021 was (on the publishing facet) part-financed by Eldridge Industries.
All GBP-USD foreign money conversions on this evaluation are based mostly on the annual common charge for 2023 as revealed by the IRS.Music Enterprise Worldwide
