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."

Comments

Don't Necessarily Blame Them

[RazzleFrog]

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.

WRONG! Guess again.

[spun]

How can ye have artistic integrity if ye won't allow downloads?
How can ye have downloads if ye don't have artistic integrity?

It is always strange for me...

[diatonic]

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.

Ohh I was right!

[Pontiac]

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

Re:Ohh I was right!

[kimvette]

Part of it is in the case of Pink Floyd, the artists actually own their work and the Animals at EMI only had distribution rights - so by distributing it in an unauthorised format EMI could have been screwed to The Wall for copyright infringement, and would have had to Run Like Hell. Instead Pink Floyd said Hey You - Not Now John! When you're One of the Few to retain ownership of your work, you get to say "Get Your Filthy Hands off My Desert, or all that will be on your shelves is Empty Spaces," and the EMI execs, blinking their Paranoid Eyes, had to once again Stop, or risk going to The Trial and end up stuck Outside the Wall.

So, rather than waste a lot of Time Waiting for the Worms to eat their mottled remains, EMI said The Show Must Go On, let's Bring the Boys Back Home to EMI and talk to them In the Flesh and say "Have a Cigar" and relax, and "Wut's uh, the deal?". When Dave, Nick, and Roger arrived, Roger was Fearless and shouted "You Animals must have Brain Damage" to think that we are Sheep who will allow you Dogs to cheapen our work. Then he grabbed the exec and put him in a headlock and started rapping his head, shouting "Is There Anybody Out there? McFly, is there Nobody Home? All I hear is Echoes. One of These Days, I'm Going to Cut You Into Little Pieces!"

Then Roger calmed down and sat down, exhausted. The EMI exect said "Don't Leave me Now; don't let your thinking be Obscured by Clouds. Stay, and we'll talk Money. Why, the Gold, it's in the. . . "

Roger exclaimed "Welcome to the Machine."

Dave interjected "Stop, Roger, don't go Burning Bridges again. The last time it tore the band apart for 22 years!"

Nick, ever the rational one, the only member to be with the band through its entire career, said "Hey You, It's One of My Turns to speak right now, and Let There Be More Light on this subject. Remember, Childhood's End, and we're at Chapter 24 of our careers. If only you would overcome your Flaming temper, we could Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and watch our sales go into Interstellar Overdrive. Remember a Day before today when we were young and were the Masters of Rock? When we shone like the sun? Today's market is The Thin Ice, or to put it in other words, The Narrow Way, and if we don't let them sell online, you may as well plant us now six feet under in Granchester Meadows."

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[mcgrew]

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.

True but irrelevant

[tm2b]

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.

Re:The Gnome

[Shadow Wrought]

I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.

Apparently their resistence hit The Wall.

Re:i so don't care

[PatPending]

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.

Re:How will they deal with...

[XxtraLarGe]

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.

iTunes has a feature called "Join CD Tracks," under the "Advanced" menu, but it only works for music you rip from a CD. It prevents the songs from playing separately if you are playing a random list.

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[NiteShaed]

Well, Pink should have realized long ago (like everyone else) that selling a single will attract more to buying the album than just selling the album alone.

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.....

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[morari]

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...

All that glitters....

[mrops]

....oh sorry wrong thread

Re:i so don't care

[angus77]

That Libertarians are like Jehova's Witnesses---they're so desperate to get a word in, they'll even reply to a sig!

Syd's Death?

[Locke2005]

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.

Re:Give the old guys a break

[element-o.p.]

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).