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Pink Floyd wins suit- EMI wont be able to sell individual tracks

post #1 of 33
3/11/10 at 12:39pm
Thread Starter 
Pink Floyd wins court fight on downloads | Media Maverick - CNET News

I'm not quite sure what to think here. I get the concept of artistic integrity and that the album is one work meant to be consumed as a whole.

However i'm not sure it's really about that and think it's more a money thing where they are afraid of cannibalized record sales.

If it truly was about artistic integrity, they would't allow those songs to be on best of or greatest hits compilations either.

Regardless, this is a very big deal with possibly wide repercussions.

Edit: I think the one direct thing it will cause is more of what they most fear which is pirating. If the only way someone could get the song "money" legitimately is to buy Dark side, they might just go looking elsewhere
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post #2 of 33
3/11/10 at 4:18pm
This is good news. I easily know whose side I am on in this case.

Pink Floyd has always been about the album as a whole. Even in their best of album "Echoes" there is obvious attention to the ordering of songs and some songs even gaplessly flow from one track to the next. "Echoes" is still an album experience.

I do hope this doesn't mean an end to digital download versions of the albums. Pink Floyd songs are also available in the Amazon MP3 store and available as individual tracks. We'll have to see if they get turned into whole album only in the Amazon MP3 store.

I'll admit to being very biased, both in favor of Pink Floyd and in favor of whole albums as an individual work. My computer listening library is whole album only. I don't have individual tracks or singles of anything in my computer library. If I download something like an individual promo track or similar it goes into a completely different directory that is outside of my library. I have to make a special effort to go to that directory to listen to any of those files. I don't want them cluttering up my library and I don't want to listen to them if they aren't an album. My playlists are also album only. I don't have any playlists that separate out a best of list of tracks or anything similar. So yeah, I'm very solidly in the album as a whole camp.

In fact the curmudgeon in me believes that Pink Floyd should somehow be able to prevent people from ripping their CDs if the tracks are going to be played on a media player or portable player that does not do proper gapless playback. Without gapless playback some Pink Floyd albums are just not the same.
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post #3 of 33
3/11/10 at 5:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
This is good news. I easily know whose side I am on in this case.

Pink Floyd has always been about the album as a whole. Even in their best of album "Echoes" there is obvious attention to the ordering of songs and some songs even gaplessly flow from one track to the next. "Echoes" is still an album experience.

I do hope this doesn't mean an end to digital download versions of the albums. Pink Floyd songs are also available in the Amazon MP3 store and available as individual tracks. We'll have to see if they get turned into whole album only in the Amazon MP3 store.

I'll admit to being very biased, both in favor of Pink Floyd and in favor of whole albums as an individual work. My computer listening library is whole album only. I don't have individual tracks or singles of anything in my computer library. If I download something like an individual promo track or similar it goes into a completely different directory that is outside of my library. I have to make a special effort to go to that directory to listen to any of those files. I don't want them cluttering up my library and I don't want to listen to them if they aren't an album. My playlists are also album only. I don't have any playlists that separate out a best of list of tracks or anything similar. So yeah, I'm very solidly in the album as a whole camp.

In fact the curmudgeon in me believes that Pink Floyd should somehow be able to prevent people from ripping their CDs if the tracks are going to be played on a media player or portable player that does not do proper gapless playback. Without gapless playback some Pink Floyd albums are just not the same.
Sure for PF albums and some other bands, but man it should be a pain for the main,
you really take care of preliminary, when going for the p****..
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post #4 of 33
3/11/10 at 5:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sonci View Post
Sure for PF albums and some other bands, but man it should be a pain for the main,
you really take care of preliminary, when going for the p****..
care to translate???
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post #5 of 33
3/11/10 at 5:37pm
This is great. A rare defeat for ADD culture.
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post #6 of 33
3/11/10 at 5:51pm
If EMI did win (thank goodness they didn't), Pink Floyd would have ended up on iTunes, and the majority of people on iTunes aren't ready to listen to a thoughtful and well-planned album all the way through.

One nice comment on Digg: I don't think I like Pink Floyd. You see, I bought this song from iTunes, and it just sounds like a bunch of alarm clocks going off...

Pink Floyd, EMI Brawl Over iTunes Royalties
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post #7 of 33
3/11/10 at 6:04pm
Thread Starter 
as of 1:00 PST they are still on itunes with individual songs available for purchase though most are at $1.29

edit: and i'm not surprised that so far the comments are pro floyd. I forget what fan base they have here
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post #8 of 33
3/11/10 at 7:06pm
btw, who`s Pink Floyd now?
DGilmour or another branch of EMI,
in fact his songs can stand very well as iTunes..
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post #9 of 33
3/11/10 at 7:41pm
If you think this is about PF "respecting the integrity of the album" I think you're naive. It's all about selling full albums over single songs. Full albums make the band a lot more money. Even if it reduces the number of downloads by 75%, The band still comes out on top if a few more people buy the full album for $9.99 and not two songs for $2.60.

This is exactly why the Beatles didn't put their catalog on iTunes or amazon, they were worried they'd lose money to single song sales over full album purchases. It had nothing to do with some crazy apple computers apple corps feud (otherwise it would be on amazon, which would be much more harmful to the iTunes store than not being in any digital download format). It had nothing to do with respecting the integrity of the album. It's all about pumping those full album sales.
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post #10 of 33
3/11/10 at 8:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fjrabon View Post
It's all about selling full albums over single songs.
i'm gonna agree here.

and that argument is further shored up by the other big artists like led zep, ac/dc, and a few others also taking forever to cave on the itunes/amazon thing.

i'm sure beatles aren't the only hold out still....

all about the bucks, baby
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post #11 of 33
3/11/10 at 8:16pm
Lovely. I can see this being used as legal precedent for other bands to force full album sales. CD sales plummeted when people could only buy the "one-hit" and not have to pay full price for the "wonder". This is a dream come true for the RIAA and could be a very bad thing for consumers.
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post #12 of 33
3/11/10 at 8:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWuss View Post
i'm gonna agree here.

and that argument is further shored up by the other big artists like led zep, ac/dc, and a few others also taking forever to cave on the itunes/amazon thing.

i'm sure beatles aren't the only hold out still....

all about the bucks, baby
Yes, but it's also going to be great for people's listening habits.
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post #13 of 33
3/11/10 at 8:22pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWuss View Post
i'm gonna agree here.

and that argument is further shored up by the other big artists like led zep, ac/dc, and a few others also taking forever to cave on the itunes/amazon thing.

i'm sure beatles aren't the only hold out still....

all about the bucks, baby
That was pretty much my reaction to the whole thing. I think Radiohead maybe on to something when they talk about not making albums anymore. Its both brave and potentially more profitable if (and its a big if) they can keep up the quality.

That being said, it may mean the end of the album as an art form in and of itself
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post #14 of 33
3/11/10 at 8:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule View Post
One nice comment on Digg: I don't think I like Pink Floyd. You see, I bought this song from iTunes, and it just sounds like a bunch of alarm clocks going off...
And then there was this one with just a bunch of cash registers and coins. On the same album! I was like, what next? They going to call a heartbeat music?
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post #15 of 33
3/11/10 at 9:08pm

Indeed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
This is good news. I easily know whose side I am on in this case.

Pink Floyd has always been about the album as a whole. Even in their best of album "Echoes" there is obvious attention to the ordering of songs and some songs even gaplessly flow from one track to the next. "Echoes" is still an album experience.

I do hope this doesn't mean an end to digital download versions of the albums. Pink Floyd songs are also available in the Amazon MP3 store and available as individual tracks. We'll have to see if they get turned into whole album only in the Amazon MP3 store.

I'll admit to being very biased, both in favor of Pink Floyd and in favor of whole albums as an individual work. My computer listening library is whole album only. I don't have individual tracks or singles of anything in my computer library. If I download something like an individual promo track or similar it goes into a completely different directory that is outside of my library. I have to make a special effort to go to that directory to listen to any of those files. I don't want them cluttering up my library and I don't want to listen to them if they aren't an album. My playlists are also album only. I don't have any playlists that separate out a best of list of tracks or anything similar. So yeah, I'm very solidly in the album as a whole camp.

In fact the curmudgeon in me believes that Pink Floyd should somehow be able to prevent people from ripping their CDs if the tracks are going to be played on a media player or portable player that does not do proper gapless playback. Without gapless playback some Pink Floyd albums are just not the same.
Very well said! Do these artist like PF not deserve their $$$$$ for their material. I think so....
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