Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
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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The members of Pink Floyd have reunited, but unfortunately it’s just to sue their label EMI. At the heart of the battle is Pink Floyd’s 1999 contract that indicated the band’s songs could not be isolated and sold outside the context of their original albums. However, on iTunes, EMI is offering all the Pink Floyd songs as a la carte purchases in addition to the full album bundles, prompting this latest lawsuit, the Guardian reports. EMI argues that the band’s clause about separating the songs only applies to their physical releases, and as it predates digital music services like iTunes, the clause doesn’t apply to the band’s downloadable discography.
In the lawsuit’s first hearing, which the band themselves didn’t attend, their lawyer Robert Howe argued, “Pink Floyd [are] well-known for performing seamless pieces. Many of the songs blend into each other,” adding that the 1999 contract “expressly prohibits” taking the songs out of context, which they allege EMI’s allowance of a la carte song purchases allows. Pink Floyd holds the label’s second most profitable back catalog behind only the Beatles.
This latest suit marks the second time in as many years that Pink Floyd and EMI have butted heads in a court of law: As Rolling Stone reported last April, the band sued EMI after accusing the label of significantly miscalculating their royalties. Pink Floyd initially signed with EMI in 1967 before moving to Columbia for their U.S. distribution for 1975’s Wish You Were Here. The group’s Columbia output was later reissued under EMI’s Capitol Records arm.
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• Pink Floyd Sue EMI Over Royalties
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