Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Dropped by BMG Over Israel Comments: Report

The music rights company parted ways with Waters amid renewed attention to allegations of antisemitism

According to Variety, Roger Waters has been let go by the music rights organisation BMG, validating a statement he made in a November interview. Although he and BMG did not answer to demands for comment, Waters, whose ambiguous attitude on the Russia-Ukraine war caused similar pushback in 2022, claims that pro-Israel groups exerted pressure on the decision. BMG was supposed to release Waters’s new version of “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Moon last year, according to Variety, but the contract was scuttled by new CEO Thomas Coesfeld, and the album ultimately ended up with Cooking Vinyl. In response to the October Hamas attacks, Bertelsmann, the German corporation that owns BMG, declared its “solidarity with Israel” in a statement last year.

The BMG withdrawal coincides with a resurgence of interest in Waters’ anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views, which some claim have turned antisemitic. Because of controversial parts of his repertoire, Waters faced stiff resistance last spring when he was granted permission to perform in Frankfurt. Among them was a videomontage that featured Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with Anne Frank as victims of governmental abuse. Later, the emblem of an Israeli weaponry business was added to a scene with a pig with the Star of David floating over the crowd.