Undoubtedly, Roger Waters’ tour (and his one-off reunion with David Gilmour) got fans excited about Pink Floyd. A natural response to the reunion madness would be an uptick in sales of Floyd albums, which is more good news. That is, unless, several of their albums are no longer available for download.
According to the New York Times (via The Daily Swarm), four of the band’s albums — 1975’s Wish You Were Here, 1977’s Animals, 1979’s The Wall, and 1983’s The Final Cut — were originally released by Columbia Records and have been distributed by EMI since 2000. But since EMI’s contract expired June 30th, these albums have since been pulled from digitial outlets like iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store. What’s more, new physical copies of the albums cannot be manufactured until a new contract is signed.
In other words, for at least a time being, these four albums are now out of print.
The news is major blow for EMI, a company that’s been struggling since being purchased by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007, as this year alone, Floyd have sold 311,000 albums and 587,000 download units. Despite the decision, EMI can still sell off any remaining physical copies of the album still in stock.
As for where Floyd’s catalog goes from here, there’s currently an 18-month-plus bidding war going on between several major labels. Many unnamed labels have already out of the bidding because the fee for the catalog has gotten entirely too high for many of them.
As always, stay tuned for more news as it’s announced.
