On Friday morning MBW despatched out a breaking information alert: we’d heard Pink Floyd had 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, through its personal sources, that the deal’s worth is USD $500 million.
The potential acquisition is believed to embody the band’s recorded music catalog, plus neighboring rights and ‘title and likeness’ rights.
However how has Sony (or some 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 grasp what it’s already incomes.
MBW has unearthed annual accounts filed by two UK-based corporations owned by Pink Floyd that permit us to just do that.
The very first thing to know: Pink Floyd personal their masters, however associate with recorded music corporations to license and/or distribute their music around the globe.
After their file distributors/licensing companions have taken their share, the proceeds from gross sales/streams of the band’s music flows into two UK corporations: 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 corporations generated revenues of GBP £40.399 million throughout their fiscal yr ended June 30 2023. That converts to USD $50.24 million.
In line with 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 enhance from the £20.8 million the corporate reported for the 2022 fiscal yr, in line with the monetary report filed with the UK’s Firms Home.
Pink Floyd Music Restricted counts all three surviving band members as administrators, together with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason.
In line with the corporate’s annual report, “the principal exercise of the corporate is the sale of bodily and digital recorded music regarding the masters it owns by means of its distributors and licensees”.
The corporate provides later within the annual report that it “sells bodily and digital recorded music by means of its distributors and licensees, bears the prices regarding these gross sales (principally distribution, manufacturing and copyright) after which makes funds for providers offered 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 included in 1987 (two years after Roger Waters left the band).
In line with 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 alternate fee for 2023.
That represents a 14% YoY lower from the GBP £11.15 million the corporate reported for the 2022 fiscal yr.
In line with 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 by means of 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 workforce was on the lookout for north of GBP £400 million for it, MBW sources instructed 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 line with our sources.
On the time, reviews instructed that the catalog had attracted curiosity from potential consumers like Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, BMG, Hipgnosis, Harmony, Major Wave, and personal fairness group Blackstone.
Information of Sony’s talks to accumulate Pink Floyd’s catalog arrives two months after Apollo World Administration confirmed that it was the lead investor in a USD $700 million “capital answer” for Sony Music Group supposed to fund music trade investments.
Apollo’s announcement arrived in the identical month MBW’s sources advised us that Apollo was a co-investor in Sony’s deal to accumulate the catalog of one other legendary rock band, Queen, for roughly GBP £1 billion.
Sony is known to be shopping for Queen’s world 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 through 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 aspect) part-financed by Eldridge Industries.
All GBP-USD foreign money conversions on this evaluation are primarily based on the annual common fee for 2023 as revealed by the IRS.Music Enterprise Worldwide
