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Pink Floyd have won their lawsuit over single-song downloads against EMI, effectively halting the digital sale of the band’s individual tracks. As Rolling Stone reported yesterday, under the terms of a 1999 contract that predated iTunes and other digital-music retailers, the band mandated its songs could not be offered outside the context of their original albums. EMI argued that the contract only covered physical and not digital releases. In the end, the judge sided with preserving Pink Floyd’s artistic vision, the BBC reports.

Check out Rolling Stone’s collection of Pink Floyd photos.

The judge also ordered EMI to pay roughly $60,000 for the band’s legal fees immediately while the court determines how much the label, to which Floyd signed in 1967, should pay in fines and damages. Also at issue: how much money Pink Floyd should receive in digital royalties, because the 1999 contract did not foresee the advent of downloadable music. Millions of dollars could be at stake; only the Beatles’ back catalog is more profitable than Pink Floyd’s.

With the ruling, it’s now last call for fans who want to legally download “The Narrow Way, Pt. 3″ without investing in the rest of Ummagumma, since at press time both iTunes and the Amazon MP3 store were still offering up Pink Floyd’s tracks as single song downloads. Expect this to change in the near future.

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In January 2009 at a MacWorld conference, Apple revealed that six billion songs had been downloaded on iTunes. In July 2009, that figure reached eight billion, and as Apple’s industry-leading digital music service nears another major milestone, iTunes is holding a “Countdown to 10 Billion Songs” contest, with the customer who downloads that 10 billionth track set to receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Apple also offered up a $10,000 iTunes gift card to the winner in the race to one billion songs; Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” was the track that brought iTunes to ten-digit downloads.

In anticipation of their ten-billionth download, Apple has put together a special download called the “Most Downloaded iTunes Songs of All Time,” which as the name suggests compiles the 25 most downloaded tracks in its seven-year history. The Black Eyed Peas own both the Number One and Three most downloaded tracks with “I Gotta Feeling” and “Boom Boom Pow,” and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” comes in Number Two. The most recent entry on the list is Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK” at 10, while the oldest most downloaded song — by about 30 years — is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” at Number 21, the lone song on the Top 25 that predates the 2000s.

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The RIAA and Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota mom accused of illegally downloading 24 songs via Kazaa, will go to trial for a third time. Thomas-Rasset has rejected the RIAA’s offer to settle the case by donating $25,000 to a “an appropriate charity benefiting musicians,” Copyrights & Campaigns reports. As Rolling Stone reported last week, a Minnesota judge slashed the $1.92 million ruling from the second trial down to $54,000, and the RIAA further cut the fine to $25,000 in the hope of finally ending the case. However, Thomas-Rasset’s lawyer said in rejecting the offer, “Jammie will not accept any offer that requires her to pay money to or on behalf of the Plaintiffs.”

In 2007, the jury in the initial trial decided Thomas-Rasset should pay a $212,000 fine for downloading songs by Green Day, Janet Jackson, Godsmack and Richard Marx. An error in jury instruction brought the case to trial a second time, which resulted in the steep $1.92 million fine, or $80,000 per downloaded song. The Justice Department defended the massive fine, but last week a Minnesota judge ruled that $1.92 million was “simply shocking” before lowering it to $54,000.

“Jammie is standing on principle here, and will not accede to payment demands that the RIAA is making through an unconstitutional statutory scheme (that they lobbied for the creation of) and we will ride this train to its appellate end no matter how many future remittiturs are rejected,” Thomas-Rasset’s lawyer Joe Sibley wrote in an e-mail to C&C. An RIAA spokesperson responded, “It is a shame that Ms. Thomas-Rasset continues to deny any responsibility for her actions rather than accept a reasonable settlement offer and put this case behind her. Given this, we will begin preparing for a new trial.”

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• Judge Slashes $1.92 Million RIAA Ruling Against Minnesota Mom
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The creators of the MP3, the revolutionary music file that sent shock waves through the industry by making songs more easily played and shared on personal computers, are working on a new format called “MusicDNA,” a file type that would house music, lyrics, videos, artwork and as much as 32 gigabyte’s worth of information, the BBC reports. Norwegian developer Dagfinn Bach, who worked on the first MP3 player in 1993, and Karlheinz Brandenburg, the inventor of the MP3, revealed the “Music DNA” files at Cannes’ Midem music conference. So far, only the U.K. indie label Beggars Banquet and Tommy Boy Records have signed up to use the new format, which will have its beta launch this spring.

According to the BBC, “MusicDNA” will likely serve as a competitor to Apple’s iTunes LP, which also offers users lyrics, more elaborate album artwork and bonus tracks. The “MusicDNA” file will also be able to update with new information whenever the file is activated. “We can deliver a file that is extremely searchable and can carry up to 32GB of extra information in the file itself, and it will be dynamically updatable so that every time the user is connected, his file will be updated,” Bach said.

Because of the large amount of information being packed into the “MusicDNA” files, each track will likely cost more than the $1.29 iTunes currently charges for newer tracks. No major labels have yet to sign pacts with the “MusicDNA” developers, but with the growing presence of iTunes LP, “MusicDNA” seems like technology that Apple’s competitors like the Amazon MP3 store would be interested in working with. “Out of a rusted old VW Beetle we are making a Ferrari,” said Bach Technology’s Stefan Kohlmeyer. “We are taking an existing idea, giving the end user a lot more and making that file much more valuable — like transforming a tiny house into a huge villa.”

If all goes well with the beta launch, the full roll out of the “MusicDNA” files is expected summer 2010. Check out the MusicDNA Website for further developments. In other tech news, Apple is planning to hold a media conference this Wednesday, January 27th, which will reportedly feature the announcement of their rumored “tablet.” Be sure to check back later this week for the full scoop.

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• Apple Reveals New iPod Models, iTunes LP

style=”font-size: 0.8em;”>Photo: Bedder/Getty Images

Ke$ha made digital sales history last week when her debut single “TiK ToK” was downloaded 610,000 times, the highest digital total for a female artist in one week since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking the figures. The current record holder for most downloads in a week, Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” also happens to feature Ke$ha on the hook, meaning the up-and-coming singer has a hand in the top two most downloaded songs in one week in digital history. Pretty impressive for an artist who hasn’t even released her debut album yet.

Ke$ha’s seems to have a stranglehold on the digital realm: her debut album Animal, out January 5th, has already managed to infiltrate the Top Five of iTunes Albums chart. It’s as if everyone who received an iTunes music store gift card in their stocking on Christmas immediately ran to their computers and downloaded “TiK ToK” or pre-ordered Animal. It appears Ke$ha is being positioned as 2010’s Lady Gaga, and she’s off to a solid start: “TiK ToK” finished atop the Billboard Hot 100 for the second consecutive week, and the track recently surpassed two million downloads total on iTunes.

Wondering what all the fuss is about? If you’ve somehow managed to escape “TiK ToK,” hear it here:

Look back at the year’s other big singles in our list of the 25 Best Songs of 2009.