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Pink Floyd Give In To Digital Downloads
An anonymous reader writes "Tripped out old rockers Pink Floyd have inked a deal with EMI to allow single tracks by the band to be peddled as digital downloads. The remains of the band was in court less than a year ago, arguing that cutting up their albums and selling individual tracks undermined the 'artistic integrity' of their work. Now, though they've given in to the Man, and the likes of Money, Shine on you Crazy Diamond and Comfortably Numb will soon no doubt be available as 99p downloads on iTunes. Have a cigar."
Most music nowadays is bite size but most of Floyd's stuff you really had to listen to the entire Album to appreciate it. But it's a new world, I suppose, and if people want to listen to just one song from the Wall randomly mixed in with Britney Spears and Lady Gaga then power to the people.
How can ye have artistic integrity if ye won't allow downloads?
How can ye have downloads if ye don't have artistic integrity?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's always strange for me to listen to Pink Floyd songs out of context from the rest of the album. It probably stems from listening to those albums start to finish in my youth, and many of the songs blending in to one an other. For example, at the end of Dark Side of the Moon, "Brain Damage" flows directly in to "Eclipse," and separating those two tracks should be illegal.
Back when the first case came up I suspected it was a move to get EMI to sign a new contract for digital sales..
In the last case EMI was claiming the old contract only covered album sales and was paying Pink Floyd a lower rate for digital sales.
Looks like the Old Pink pulled it off..
Link to my comment on the first EMI case
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Damned kids... most of Pink Floyd's songs are far better in context; at least, the later albums (all but the first two).
You won't likely hear Echoes on the radio. Is that one 99c too? It's a whole album side, about 20 minutes long IIRC.
Free Martian Whores!
They are completely right that it does undermine the integrity of their albums, but they really lost that fight as soon as radio stations were playing individual tracks.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
How will they deal with songs that run together? Pink Floyd does this a lot. For example, from The Wall, "The Thin Ice", "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)", "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" should really all be listened to together. I can't imagine anyone actually paying to own just "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", clocking in at just 1:46. Another solid example, from the same album, would be "Empty Spaces" and "Young Lust".
While on the subject, it has long been a pet peeve of mine that music players don't recognize such songs exist and allow you to group them together, so when a random playlist is created, these songs still run together like they're supposed to.
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Apparently their resistence hit The Wall.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon holds the record for most weeks on Billboard's list (772 weeks). Now get off my lawn.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
What makes you think they care? They've made their money, millions and millions, maybe they really do care more about the presentation than anything else at this point (maybe they always have). Pink Floyd albums are about the concept, not the song. Try putting a few Floyd albums into your MP3 player and hitting shuffle....it's FUCKING HORRIBLE. Songs cut off seemingly in the middle, 10 second tracks of people shouting pop up out of nowhere, it's a mess. If you listen to them as albums though, it's a totally different experience (and IMHO a pretty great one).
There are tons of bands that put out good stand-alone songs, but it's just not really what Pink Floyd does. If I were them, I'd push to keep the albums together, and sell only the songs that worked as singles back when they were released individually, things like Money, Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell. It just doesn't make sense to buy most of Pink Floyd's music as individual tracks.....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Exactly. Pink Floyd's discography is largely made up of concept albums. While some single tracks are enjoyable out of context, nothing compares to the actual album. Of course, kids nowadays are used to albums full of shit with only one or two tracks even worth listening to...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
....oh sorry wrong thread
Roger Waters has owned the rights to "The Wall" since 1987, not Pink Floyd.
That Libertarians are like Jehova's Witnesses---they're so desperate to get a word in, they'll even reply to a sig!
Syd died in 2006, far too late for them to learn anything from his death. They were scared into avoiding drugs by Syd's descent into psychosis triggered by his heavy LSD use, not by his death. Gilmore was Syd's replacement.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon
The singles were released well after the album charted, BTW. There were a few Pink Floyd singles but very few of them, and they really were not contributing factors to the albums' successes.
What made Pink Floyd successful was once they achieved a certain level of success in England they had the attitude of "fuck it" where the labels were concerned, and did what they wanted - and what they wanted to do was avant guard experimental music.
Some might hate the Ummagumma studio record but I love it for its uniqueness, that it is so out there, but that they manage to achieve such ethereal and non-traditional sounds and yet still arrange them into musical works. They had an entire album side where each member could do whatever the heck struck their fancy at the moment, and a lot of the stuff is fantastically weird, but in a good way.
And strangely, Pink Floyd have mastered balancing complexity and simplicity, never quite taking it "over the top" like Queen did, keeping the composition as a whole in mind, especially with their longer pieces and with Meddle, when they started delving into the "concept album" idea. Now, some of it did get a little whiny due to Roger's daddy issues, but they are still quite good. One vastly underrated work is "the final cut" which is actually quite good. It's missing Rick's keyboard work so it is missing the signature Pink Floyd sound and ambiance, but if you consider it a Roger Waters solo work (which it pretty much is thanks to his egomania at the time) it's likely his best solo work to date.
Meddle? The track Echoes is orgasmic to listen to. IMHO, it is one of the best tracks ever recorded. The way I can think of to best describe Pink Floyd is as a modern take of classical, where the pieces can be long and there can be a lot that is complex, but that there is a consistency to it that is missing from a lot of today's mainstream pop.
That's not to say that they are like Metallica where everything since the black album sounds like the black album. It's more that there is a quality and presence to Pink Floyd's work where you can hear a measure of a work from them and know it's them, even if you had never heard that work before. A lot of that has to do with Wright's talent on the keys as a Jazz musician, but it also has to do with their focus on a good, clean sounding production (the engineering aspect of the recording).
I really hope that the labels haven't lost sight of the potential this kind of music has. It certainly doesn't earn a quick buck and requires a big investment and 2-3 albums that might flop, but once the work gains notice it could very easily become a dinosaur.
Singles are not necessary. A great album can sell itself. The problem is the labels are unwilling to take such risks - they can't see the HUGE profits past their greed.
And as far as selling out is concerned, and the issue being over money rather than integrity? They were offered $100mil each to tour after 2005. They turned the money down, saying they would do more charity gigs but not tour. Those guys don't need money when they're each earning millions per MONTH from record sales alone, let alone current projects and investments, and licensed works. Once you're making a million a year, or ten million, or whatever, what's a million more? Money that will just sit, or you'll just blow on useless crap, or give away/donate.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
kids these day? you mean ALWAYS.
With rare exception, pretty much every album is a couple of good songs, and a bunch of shit.
Pink Floyd was one of the exceptions.
The Wall came out in 1979 look at these other hits:
http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1979.htm
My Sharona, the knack. That song s good but that album is hardly 'a work' in and of itself.
Her i a list of the albums for 1979:
http://cashboxmagazine.com/archives/70s_files/1979YEAP.html
SO it is as it's always been: a few great pieces of music, and some great singles, and mostly crap that will be laughed at in 5 years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I rather suspect that one who describes something as "lugubrious" on an Internet forum has no business calling anything else "pretentious". Besides, I rather enjoyed "Shine on you crazy diamond" (as well as the rest of "Wish You Were Here" for that matter).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?