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Pink Floyd's Waters Angry At Music Streaming

Pink Floyd's founder members Roger Waters and Nick Mason have spoken out about their anger at music streaming sites at a ceremony to unveil a plaque in their honour.

The pair were outside the University of Westminster which used to be the Regent Street Polytechnic where they formed the group, together with Richard Wright, while studying from 1962 to 1965.

Revealing the special heritage plaque, the pair reminisced about their time as students.

Mason, 71, said: "We are, gratified, yeah. It's very nice, it's recognition for something that I think we are proud of ... We were all on grants ... I got 50 quid, means tested, I suppose ... I spent mine on curry."

Rogers, 71, added: "I spent mine on bass guitars."

The band, one of the most commercially successful ever with records sales in excess of 250 million, had an initial line-up that also included Syd Barrett, another student.

David Gilmour became the fifth member in 1967.

When Barrett left the band in 1968, Waters became the main lyricist and, by the 1970s, the main songwriter, devising concept albums such as Animals, The Wall and Dark Side Of The Moon.

Waters said he was unhappy about sites like Spotify, saying they were making it impossible for young musicians and writers to earn a living.

"I think one is angry just as everybody else should be. All of those b******* in Silicon Valley who are stealing not just our work but all the work that all the musicians all over the world are doing.

"They are spreading it across the internet and then people believe it's free and that it should be free. And it shouldn't be free.

"Being a musician is just like any other job. It's perfectly reasonable that people are required to pay for the fruits of your labour," he said.

The pair added that when they were first starting out they were terrible and agreed that they didn't think they would make it through the first round of Britain's Got Talent.

Gilmour and Mason are the two remaining members of the band still working under the Pink Floyd name.

Waters left in the 1980s for a solo career.

With Wright, who died in 2008, the four played together in a one-off reunion in July 2005 for the Live 8 anti-poverty concert in London.