Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ Album Returning

The album that consolidated Pink Floyd’s superstar status fifty years ago receives an anniversary box set treatment.

(L-R) A member of staff poses in front of the back cover image outtake of the album ‘Wish you were Here’, a photograph by Storm Thorgerson featured on the inside of the album ‘Wish you were Here’ and the front cover picture of the album ‘Wish you were Here’ by Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell in Hollywood during a photocall at the ‘The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in west London on May 9, 2017. – RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE (Photo by Daniel LEAL / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE (Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)

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Classic rock is enjoying a series of financially lucrative victory laps as its audiences mature and have considerable disposable income to spend on reminiscence. That’s the target market for the 2 CD/3 vinyl LP Pink Floyd set, available in multiple formats include a Super Deluxe box retailing at around $250. The album is scheduled for release on December 12.

Aside from any historical value connected with the anniversary, the release is another phase in Sony Music’s recoupment of the company’s $400 million deal to buy Pink Floyd’s recorded music catalog, announced in October 2024. That purchase was part of over a billion dollars spent by Sony on music catalogs by Queen, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan, supported by investment firms. Ironically, although Wish You Were Here savages the hypocrisies of the record industry, both that album and Pink Floyd are now objects in an even larger financial sphere than at the time of the record’s original release half a century ago.

Revisiting the Past

Wish You Were Here topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in 1975 without a hit single, but its place in rock history has often been overshadowed by its legendary predecessor, 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Its established success and Sony’s ownership of the recording means that no group members have been involved in promoting the box set.

While Pink Floyd struggled to cope with the huge success of The Dark Side of the Moon currently amounting to 15 million copies sold in America, the band still eventually moved over six million units of Wish You Were Here, giving the album major commercial impact and longevity. Most of those copies were sold between 1986 and 1997, demonstrating the record’s mythical status in the band’s extensive catalog and the attraction it continues to hold for Pink Floyd fans.

The original release contained only five tracks totaling forty-four minutes, so the box set features the now typical assortment of alternate takes and mixes, demos, and live material from the same era, along with print literature including a hardcover book and a poster.

As a major release in Pink Floyd’s repertoire, Wish You Were Here has been previously reissued in a 2011 ‘Immersion’ box set of five discs including video material. A new Dolby Atmos mix adds value to the 2025 box set’s previously unreleased material.

Such extras become more important as skeptical fans who purchased previous iterations of the record question album repackaging strategies as duplication of material that are lucrative for the respective record companies.

The Wish You Were Here Packaging

Pink Floyd’s appeal to rock audiences extended beyond their music and incorporated their album visuals, with most of their most memorable album art created by Hipgnosis, the collective led by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Emphasizing the power of cover art, Powell comments that “In the 1970s, album covers were equally as important as the music, because the cover helped to sell the record.” The art was a deeply integral element of fan experience and that awareness carries over to the 2025 collection.

The new box set employs a fresh overall design, but one that is still draws on Pink Floyd’s history. An animation of the album’s original packaging is one of the first graphic scenes greeting visitors to the band’s official website. First sold in opaque black plastic with an identifying sticker added at the record company’s insistence (EMI, at that time), the Wish You Were Here packaging played out the theme of absence explored on the record. Removing the plastic revealed two executives shaking hands with one on fire, symbolizing ‘getting burned’ in the business. While that graphic remains a part of the 2025 box set, it’s once again a secondary internal layer.

Where From Here?

Pink Floyd followers can reasonably expect similar reissues of Animals (1977, and remixed in 2018) and The Wall (1979, and previously boxed in 2012), with remastered and rare audio content. However, it does appear likely that Sony Music will need to diversify its exploitation of the group’s catalog to ensure suitable returns on its huge investment.