And then one day you find, 50 years have got behind Pink Floyd since releasing its groundbreaking album, The Dark Side of the Moon. The iconic psychedelic rock band will celebrate the half-century milestone with a box set out on March 24th via Sony Music.
Along with the newly remastered edition of one of the best-selling albums of all time, Pink Floyd will also release The Dark Side of the Moon – Live at Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974. Available on CD and for the first time on vinyl, the audio recorded on November 15th and 16th, 1974 hears the band play through all ten tracks on the album released the previous spring. Prior to recording The Dark Side of the Moon at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios in London) in 1972 and 1973, Pink Floyd debuted the songs live on the road and made adjustments from show to show. Live at Wembley Empire Pool shows the songs in their fully formed state as the album began its half-century conquest of the rock charts, going on to sell over 50 million copies worldwide.
Pink Floyd is also inviting fans to get in on the TDSOTM 50th birthday party with a video competition. Open now through November 30th, Pink Floyd is accepting fan-made submissions for music videos to accompany the album’s ten classic tracks. Filmmakers are allowed to submit one entry per song, with the winners selected by a panel of experts including drummer Nick Mason, the band’s creative director Aubrey “Po” Powell, and the British Film Institute.
Back on February 27th, 1973, EMI Records convened a press conference to announce The Dark Side of the Moon. In order to deliver the full effect of the transformative album, the conference was held at the London Planetarium with the music broadcast beneath a sea of stars. The album became a staple of laser rock shows throughout the following decades, and to celebrate this latest milestone Pink Floyd has curated an official dome experience pairing 42 minutes of The Dark Side of the Moon with visuals of the solar system and beyond. The experience will arrive in planetariums around the world in March.
Related: New Documentary On Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd To Feature Both Roger Waters & David Gilmour
Pink Floyd’s 50th anniversary The Dark Side of the Moon box set is available here for pre-order. The full box set includes the 2023 remastered version of the album on CD and vinyl as well as Live at Wembley Empire Pool on CD and vinyl. Fans will also receive the album on Blu-Ray and DVD audio, a 160-page hardback book of black and white photos taken on the 1972–1975 tours of the U.S. and U.K., a 76-page music book, replicas of 7″ singles, and a recreation of the pamphlet distributed at the album’s 1973 London Planetarium premiere.
This news comes during a time of increased tension and activity for Pink Floyd. Bassist Roger Waters made repeated headlines last year for his comments on, among other things, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those comments were rumored to have sunk a deal for the band’s catalog worth as much as $500 million. Guitarist David Gilmour on Nick Mason, on the other hand, reactivated the Pink Floyd name to release a song supporting Ukraine, “Hey Hey Rise Up“. In December, Pink Floyd for the second year in a row released a trove of live albums, presumably in an effort to protect the band’s copyright protections in Europe. The 18 live albums came from the Dark Side of the Moon era and, along with the upcoming 50th-anniversary box set, mark the most significant vault release from the band’s 1973–1980 commercial peak.
