Legal News

No Singles Allowed! Pink Floyd Explores Dark Side of The Law

By Nathan Koppel

Legendary psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd and its famous bassist Roger Waters (pictured) can now count themselves as legal pioneers, winning a ruling yesterday that strikes a blow at the bite-sized ethos of digital music downloads

Here’s a report from WSJ’s Paul Sonne:

The Floyd, as they're called by those in The Know, filed suit in London asserting that the band should be able to block the download of individual Floyd songs; the band's artistry, it argues, can only be appreciated by listening to its full-length albums.

A British High Court ruled Thursday that Pink Floyd’s 1999 contract with its record label, EMI Group, prohibits EMI from selling the band’s work in any configuration other than its original form without the band’s permission. The contract dates from before the advent of digital music. (Here's a WSJ article on the ruling.)

EMI argued in court this week that the 1999 contract language only applied to physical albums or CDs, not downloads.

“Contrary to some media reports, today’s judgment does not require EMI to cease making Pink Floyd’s catalogue available as single track downloads," EMI said in a statement.

But a band spokesman said Floyd plans to see to it that its albums are sold only as whole pieces. “This is an art debate, not a commerce debate,” the spokesman said. “The court has upheld our contractual rights that those tracks should not be unbundled.”

Pink Floyd sold 654,000 albums last year, both online and offline, and 1.71 million digitally downloaded tracks, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Who knew there were that many Floyd-erattis still out there?")

But it isn't just progressive-rock bands that have argued for full-album sales. So have hard rockers AC/DC, who have withheld their music from iTunes partly because they don't want albums like "Highway to Hell" to be sold in pieces.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 12, 2010 (boomark / email).