In what’s becoming an annual tradition, Pink Floyd quietly uploaded 18 Dark Side of the Moon-era concerts onto streaming services recently, as well as a collection of “alternative tracks” from their legendary 1973 LP.
In Dec. 2021, Pink Floyd similarly dumped a dozen unreleased concerts, spanning from 1970 to 1972, on streaming services without any fanfare; artists like Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan have employed this tactic in the past in order to extend the rights of the recordings.
In 2013, a rep for Sony explained Dylan’s release of uncirculated music by telling Rolling Stone, “The copyright law in Europe was recently extended from 50 to 70 years for everything recorded in 1963 and beyond. With everything before that, there’s a new ‘Use It or Lose It’ provision. It basically said, ‘If you haven’t used the recordings in the first 50 years, you aren’t going to get any more.’”
The 18 concerts — none of which have been released in any official capacity — span from Jan. 23, 1972 to Dec. 9, 1972, with Pink Floyd workshopping, fine-tuning and then perfecting The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety at every show ahead of its March 1973 release. Pink Floyd’s entire four-night stand at London’s Rainbow Theatre from Feb. 17 to 20, 1972 is also available for streaming.
The five-track bonus collection, titled simply “Alternative Tracks 1972,” features trance remixes and “ultra rare” alternative versions of five of Dark Side’s songs, including a rough demo of “On the Run.”
Like the 2021 concert dump, all of the newly uploaded recordings with similarly generic artwork are copyrighted to Pink Floyd Music Ltd., suggesting these are official releases from the band. However, with the copyright seemingly reestablished, the concerts uploaded in the 2021 release have since been removed from streaming services, which means the 2022 slate is likely not long for the digital world.
Here’s the 18 live albums Pink Floyd quietly added to streaming services:
Live at Southampton Guildhall, UK, 23 January 1972
Live at Carnegie Hall, New York, 5 Feb 1972
Live at the Rainbow Theatre, London 17 February 1972
Live at the Rainbow Theatre, London 18 Feb 1972
Live at the Rainbow Theatre, London 19 Feb 1972
Live at the Rainbow Theatre, London 20 Feb 1972
Live at the Taiikukan, Tokyo, Japan, 3 Mar 1972
Live at Osaka Festival Hall, Japan, 8 Mar 1972
Live at Nakajima Sports Centre, Sapporo, Japan, 13 Mar 1972
Live at Chicago Auditorium Theatre, USA, 28 April 1972
Live at the Deutschlandhalle, Berlin, Germany, 18 May 1972
Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, 22 Sept 1972
Live at the Empire Pool, Wembley, London, 21 Oct 1972
Live at Ernst-Merck Halle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 Nov 1972
Live at the Palais des Sports, Poitiers, France 29 Nov 1972
Live at the Palais des Sports de L’Ile de la Jatte, Saint Ouen, France, 1 Dec 1972
Live at the Vorst Nationaal, Brussels, Belgium, 5 Dec 1972
Live at The Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland 9 Dec 72
Alternative Tracks 1972