Pink Floyd Stealth-Release Another 18 ‘Dark Side of the Moon’-Era Concerts

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music In what has become an annual tradition, in the closing days of each year, veteran artists quietly release bootleg-quality recordings in order to preserve their copyrights, owing to a not-entirely-clear European Union ruling stating that artists must “use or lose” (i.e.

officially issue) sound recordings within 50 years of their creation. If they do not, the recordings then go into public domain and become fair game for anyone to release legally without compensating the creator(s).

The practice began to gain steam around 10 years ago, as early recordings by Bob Dylan, Motown Records, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others reached the half-century mark, but because the material wasn’t previously considered strong enough for official release even as an archival item, the artists usually bury them in limited-edition CD collections or brief streaming availability. (Head here for more details on so-called “copyright dumps.”) Despite their vicious, decades-long internal squabbles, Pink Floyd are among the most savvy artists when it comes to the value of their catalog, and two years ago they began essentially repossessing bootleg recordings of concerts from their early career by posting them on streaming services for a few weeks — thus officially releasing them — before taking them down.

The group officially released nearly all of their ‘60s-era material, regardless of sound quality, on a sprawling boxed set in 2016, but owing to the much larger number of bootleg recordings from the early ‘70s and afterward, the “copyright dump” tactic became necessary.