Pink Floyd Win Court Battle Over Online Sales
March 11th, 2010
Good Morning, Worm Your Honor… Pink Floyd have won a High Court battle to stop their record label EMI selling individual songs online.
The rock legends, signed to EMI since 1967, said their contract meant their albums could not be split up without their permission.
A judge agreed, saying the contract contained a clause to “preserve the artistic integrity of the albums”.
EMI has been ordered to pay £40,000 ($60,000) in costs, with a further fine to be decided.
The group, whose latest contract was signed before download stores like iTunes appeared, also disputed the way royalties for digital sales were calculated.
In court, Chancellor Sir Andrew Morritt declared that the contract means EMI is not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd’s consent.
The band largely avoided releasing singles during their career, instead preferring fans to listen to entire albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold more than 35 million copies around the world.
Pink Floyd tracks have been available on download stores like iTunes.
Earlier this week, Robert Howe QC, appearing for the group, said the the band’s deal with EMI stipulated that their “seamless” albums should not be split up and that they “wanted to retain artistic control”.
He said it would have been “a very odd result” if band members were able to control exactly how their music was sold as a physical product but there was “a free-for-all with no limitation on online distribution”.
Elizabeth Jones QC, appearing for EMI, disagreed and said the word “record” in the band’s contract “plainly applies to the physical thing – there is nothing to suggest it applies to online distribution”.
The band were not present to hear the judgment at the High Court in London.
The issue of selling individual tracks online has been a thorny one for many artists, who want their albums to be seen as complete works. Bands also receive less money if fans pick and choose tracks instead of buying a full suite of songs.
It is believed to be one reason why The Beatles – whose catalogue is also owned by EMI – have not appeared in download stores like iTunes.
Garth Brooks and AC/DC are among the others who have objected to their albums being split up.
Source: BBC
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March 11th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Common sense prevails! Pink Floyd’s work is art, not a juke box or ipod shuffle.
March 11th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
pink floyd songs should be heared as they are meant to be,as part of the album experiance.
March 11th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
The symbols are to be studied with integrity
March 11th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Only Pink Floyd should decide what happens to their work and no one else.
March 13th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Sorry, but how does the consumer win here? There are some albums that are not cohesive in the first place, and are not apt to be listened to straight through every time – so why should we be told what we can buy and how? It’s the 21st century, things change. Why not decide that we can only buy vinyl versions of Dark Side, as that was how the band intended it in the first place? The band will lose sales, not gain.
March 17th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Hey, I’ve been listening to the local Rock radio station my whole life. They play songs like ‘Money’, ‘Shine On…’, ‘Wish You Were Here’, ‘Us & Them’ and others alone all the time. This is also a band that has released collections like ‘Relics’ and ‘Echoes’ which shamelessly pick apart their albums track by track. To me this is no different than being able to buy just one track from an album; like say, ‘On the Turning Away’ and ‘Learning to Fly’ from AMLOR.
April 1st, 2010 at 2:51 am
I respect the wishes of the artist that their work is heard as intended. If people don’t like it they can jump. Pink Floyd have more integrity than the average band.
April 9th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I agree with the artist on this point but, what about radio play. Artist are payed for that. Radio play takes individual songs out of albums or collections.
Still it is the marketing company like EMI or any recording company should be representing the artist and if the artist does not want to sold that way but, is hypocritical about radio play I suppose that is fine as well.
-Travis
September 20th, 2010 at 1:43 am
All in all its just EMI licking bags
September 28th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
good thing everyone should here their albums should be heard in intirety
October 18th, 2010 at 8:22 am
[...] [...]
November 27th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
The work created by Pink Floyd can only be concieve as art and art should only be apreciated in its context and as a whole and not as partial, therefore an album by Pink Floyd should not be split currumping its context.
February 19th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
I agree with Pink Floyd and for anyone who mentions radio play, really thats a completely different scenario. Radio is random you dont pick or choose anything from it and the person who does choose the music most likely has the whole album but by the idea of playing individual songs its that they can play the whole album. Also selling things is different form playing things. One day you might feel like listening to one song from an album instead of the whole thing and thats perfectly ok, its just that only buying that one song would destroy the original intentions of the album especially for a concept album that may need the whole album to complete the message conveyed.
May 18th, 2011 at 5:21 am
As waters so rightly put it in his lyrics.
The powers that be.
Put a stop to the soap opera right now.
They say the toothless get ruthless.
They pick horses for courses.
They’re the market forces.
The powers that be.
They like a tough game,
No rules
Some you win, some you LOSE.
I don’t think its anything to do with MONEY.
As gary said in the first message,
Common sense prevails!
June 27th, 2011 at 10:40 am
For example, I transferred my SACD version (CD track) of Dark Side of the Moon to iTunes. iTunes promptly split the recording at the track indicators. This was horrible because I got a couple of seconds blank right at the crucial moments when the songs dissolve from one to the other.
Annoying as this might seem, this annoyance was exacerbated when I plugged my iPod into my new car’s steroe system. The damn thing jumps around all track so I can’t even hear awole album when I want to.
I have since resolved this problem but it served to illustrate to me why Pink Floyd insist that the tracks should not be sold separately. They really are not the same standing alone.