Yet it also threatens to derail a blockbuster rights deal that would land the group a $500m (£413m) payday.
So, they’re looking to sell the rights. Hipgnosis and the like. It looks like a rich, rich, price:
By comparison, Bob Dylan’s songs are estimated to have sold for around $300m. Bruce Springsteen sold his back catalogue for a reported $550m in 2021, though this included both recorded and publishing rights.
The auction includes Pink Floyd’s recorded rights but not the publishing rights. This means that while the buyer would gain control of the recorded songs, they would not own the compositions themselves.
Ah, no, that’s a ludicrous price. It also explains this:
In a further sign of deteriorating relations, Waters this week told the Telegraph that he has re-recorded The Dark Side of the Moon from scratch, cutting his bandmates out in the process.
Those rights would only include the old version, not the new. As with Taylor Swift re-recording her albums.
Rights come in a number of flavours. And trying to sell the ones just running out, partially being replaced, for near half a billion does seem steep, no? Especially when the longer running ones on the songs themselves, the ones with 70 plus years still to go, aren’t included?
“cutting his bandmates out in the process.”
I’ve been wondering about this. Is this just Waters playing a ukelele and a kazoo ?
Isn’t this about the stage in a business’s life that Mike Ashley steps in?
I don’t understand what business this really is. People like Springsteen, Dylan are past peak. I’m not saying they aren’t talented, but the people who really love them, to whom the music really means something because it was the soundtrack of their youth are dying. Like most of those £90 versions of Dark Side of the Moon that Roger Waters recorded are going to be bought by pensioners.
It’s like the gradual declining admissions to Graceland.
These artists are being pretty smart, I think. Take the lump sum and give it to the kids instead of having them collect an ever declining royalty payment.
I don’t think you really get the eternal now of this here interweb, BoM4. There are all sorts of people from years back being rediscovered. To the rediscoverers this is happening in the now, not in the way back when. Friend’s son was part of the rediscovery of a Brit band I saw live in ’71. Had evaporated by ’75. But to them it’s now music because they’ve discovered it now. The band members must now be in their 70’s or 6ft under/in a jar on a mantelpiece more likely. But to the rediscovers they’re in their early 20’s. And will eternally be so.
Damian Korner* was locked in all sorts of battles with EMI(IIRC) over his Dad’s back catalogue. He owns the rights to the Deram tracks. Alexis was pretty seminal to Brit blues, so to any Brit bluester of the latest generation, in a sense he’s still contemporary. So his stuff should be out there, not locked away in a record company’s back catalogue.
*Last time I saw Damian he was in a wheelchair. Some sort of unspecified nerve affliction. So I suspect he’s no longer with us. His mobile certainly stopped functioning. Who’s now championing the cause, if any, I don’t know. I have some recordings but who has rights to them…
With regard to older music, it’s worth noting that Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, released in 1985 is in the UK charts right now (at 86). It reached no. 3 in 1985 and recently was used in Stranger Things, leading to it reentering the charts, hitting the no. 1 spot in June last year.
And a re-working of Elton John hits from the 70’s and 80’s into a duet between him and Dua Lipa called Cold Heart also got to no.1 in 2021, so there’s still considerable value in music from that era.
Mainstream music is so bad now that people are being desperately searching the past for something to listen to, not enough to make the music companies change who they sign and what they put out, but enough to be worth a reasonable sum to some
@BniC
Yes, it’s amazing the number of covers of old works that there are. By some guys called Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, for example. I’ve never seen any of them play live at a music festval.