No more DLing individual Pink Floyd tracks

[sdhonda]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... albums.ars

One little victory for artistic control.

[Ollie, don'tcha know!]

That's pretty awesome. You really can't listen to any of thei songs individually.

[Evil Jim]

Court nixes individual track downloads of Pink Floyd albums
By Jacqui Cheng

Individual Pink Floyd songs will soon disappear from online music stores. The British High Court has ruled against EMI, the band's record label, saying that the band's contract requires EMI to "preserve the artistic integrity of the albums." In this case, that means keeping all the tracks together and in the order they were meant to be in, leading some to worry whether Pink Floyd's music will disappear from popular online music stores altogether.

When Pink Floyd signed with EMI back in the late '60s, its members probably did not imagine an age when we would be ditching physical media en masse in favor of cherry-picked songs on a series of Internet tubes. It's unsurprising then that the contract stipulated for the label to maintain the artistic integrity of the album itself—back then (and today as well, but perhaps to a lesser degree), musicians spent painstaking amounts of time crafting the entire album as a whole artwork. Those who only listened to select tracks were totally missing out.

Indeed, as EMI has discovered, that still appears to be the case, at least when it comes to Pink Floyd. The High Court ordered EMI to pay £40,000 in court costs with the possibility of future damages and EMI may have to pull Pink Floyd's individual offerings from places like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. (As of this writing, the albums with per-track purchases were still available. Get 'em while they're hot.) In addition, EMI must pay Pink Floyd an undisclosed amount in royalty payments.

This doesn't mean they wouldn't become available again as full-album purchases, though—iTunes, for example, regularly offers albums that have one or two tracks that only come with a full album purchase. We wouldn't be surprised to see Dark Side of the Moon come back to iTunes with every track marked "Album only."

I agree with the preservation of their artistic integrity. Many of their albums were crafted to be a whole experience with how songs lead into one another. I should have mentioned in the "Tracks you never skip" thread a number of songs by Pink Floyd because they're such a great journey.

But then, I've had all their albums (except Final cut :[ ) since before MP3 stores became the way to buy music so the ruling doesn't really affect me.

[empath]

Cool.

[Nevrmore]

No, not cool. Pretty assy, in fact. I mean, I understand the reasoning behind it. Sure, you're not getting the whole picture if you only want to listen to Hey You, or Time, or whatever. But that's your choice if you just like one or a few of the songs off any given album. When I want to listen to Pink Floyd I usually don't play the entire album unless I've got time on my hands. It's most often just me wanting to jam while I'm driving to school or something.

What are they going to do next? Declare that Mother and Comfortably Numb don't officially count as songs because they're the only two on The Wall that don't connect with the songs before them? Are they going to find artists who cover their songs and sue them for not performing them correctly? Are they going to personally come to our houses and beat us up for not interpreting the music the way they intended us to?

There's preserving your artistic integrity and then there's being a pretentious prick.

[empath]

{valid points that I don't actually disagree with}

There's preserving your artistic integrity and then there's being a pretentious prick.

Ah, but who ever said those two things had to be mutually exclusive?

[sdhonda]

No, not cool. Pretty assy, in fact. I mean, I understand the reasoning behind it. Sure, you're not getting the whole picture if you only want to listen to Hey You, or Time, or whatever. But that's your choice if you just like one or a few of the songs off any given album. When I want to listen to Pink Floyd I usually don't play the entire album unless I've got time on my hands. It's most often just me wanting to jam while I'm driving to school or something.

What are they going to do next? Declare that Mother and Comfortably Numb don't officially count as songs because they're the only two on The Wall that don't connect with the songs before them? Are they going to find artists who cover their songs and sue them for not performing them correctly? Are they going to personally come to our houses and beat us up for not interpreting the music the way they intended us to?

There's preserving your artistic integrity and then there's being a pretentious prick.

Of course, they arn't trying to outlaw the "skip" button.

[Nevrmore]

So say you've listened to the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon at one point or another, maybe whilst at a friend's house or something. You decide that the only song you like on it is Money and that's what you want to download. You've heard the whole thing, got the whole experience out of it; Why should you have to pay $10.00 when you only want to hear one song?

[sdhonda]

Then, odds are, that kinda music isn't for you anyways...

[Nevrmore]

Are you intentionally missing the point to piss me off?

[Kara]

Between me and my dad I already own all Pink Floyd albums. This makes no difference to me.

Also, I've never not bought a full album, so yeah.

[Evil Jim]

There's preserving your artistic integrity and then there's being a pretentious prick.

And there's also being a whiny bitch.

Say, maybe that's why Venus de Milo has no arms. Someone only liked that part of the statue.

[sdhonda]

Bad reply. Apologies.

However, consider it from this view: How often do people bitch that their favorite scene from a film is not available ala carte? How many people bitch that their favorite short story in a collection is not available ala carte? Their favorite minigame?

Better yet, why arnt individual riffs being sold? I mean, who wants to hear an entire fucking song when all we really want is the "dun, dun, dun dun dun, dunananana dun dun dun"? Heck, in the case of 10-20 or so minute long songs, why is no one bitching for those songs to be split up?

[Evil Jim]

Really don't mind if you sit this one out. My words but a whisper, your deafness a shout.

[sdhonda]

Also, even if they are pretentious dicks, in this case, keep in mind that this is an important precedent. Itunes et.al, for all it's important contributions, has been hacking away at the idea of a song that's more than 4 minutes long, and the idea that, "hey, these songs ought to be listened together in a right row".

[sdhonda]

Really don't mind if you sit this one out. My words but a whisper, your deafness a shout.

When you speak, is it you that hears? Are your ears full? You can't hear anything at all...

Ya, I'm done here then.

[Evil Jim]

Nice

[Nevrmore]

There's preserving your artistic integrity and then there's being a pretentious prick.

And there's also being a whiny bitch.

Say, maybe that's why Venus de Milo has no arms. Someone only liked that part of the statue.

Oh, shut the fuck up. I am an avid Pink Floyd fan and I'll be the first to tell anyone who expresses interest in one of their songs to listen to the entire album for the full picture, but comparing it to the Venus de Milo is so outrageously fellating that I have a hard time taking you seriously at all.

Bad reply. Apologies.

However, consider it from this view: How often do people bitch that their favorite scene from a film is not available ala carte? How many people bitch that their favorite short story in a collection is not available ala carte? Their favorite minigame?

Maybe I'm just misinterpreting the use of the phrase "a la carte," but I don't understand what you're asking, mostly because you can't take a scene from a movie or a short story from a collection out of context like you can a song from an album. Unless you bring a pair of scissors with you to the library and cut the pages out to take them home.

Better yet, why arnt individual riffs being sold? I mean, who wants to hear an entire fucking song when all we really want is the "dun, dun, dun dun dun, dunananana dun dun dun"? Heck, in the case of 10-20 or so minute long songs, why is no one bitching for those songs to be split up?

Because songs aren't broken into individual riffs. But albums are broken into individual songs. If Pink Floyd wanted everyone to listen to their entire LP every time they got the jonesing for it, they would just make the whole thing one huge song. It's not like they're afraid of doing it; Look at Echoes.

[King Kool]

Oh, you have to buy the whole album of one of the best bands ever, like most of us had to buy all of some shit album for one song. Lemme pass around the alms bowl.

[Nevrmore]

Oh, right. I guess the world should just throw away all its technology and devolve for you since you had such a rough time growing up. Might as well throw away this laptop, too, and correspond by carrier pigeon from now on, right?

This isn't even coming from someone who only picks and chooses certain Pink Floyd songs. I have physical copies of The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and Echoes somewhere in my room. So I'm not trying to defend myself here. I just don't see the point of forcing someone to buy an entire album when there are alternative methods available for only getting the songs they like. Since Evil Jim has already set a precedent for wildly hyperbolic analogies, what if you needed to go to the hospital because you broke your finger, and the doctor decided to just amputate your entire arm?

[King Kool]

Nevrmore, you're forgetting what Wil Wheaton taught us.

[Nevrmore]

Says the guy who replied to my complaints with so much sarcasm I could just imagine him rolling his eyes whilst flippantly waving his hand through the air, possibly while making a loud scoffing sound so everyone in the immediate vicinity would know that he was disapproving of whatever he was bearing witness to.

I'd be loathe to start carrying a persecution complex around here with me but I'm pretty fucking tired of being called a quote/unquote "whiny bitch" and then three replies later I'm the one getting labeled a dick. So if you want to respond to my actual argument any time soon instead of trying to dodge it with your pithy little statements, I'm not stopping you.

[King Kool]

I argue for what I always argue for: temperance. There's no reason to make a big deal about this. It's their album and they can choose how to sell it.

We are united by comedy, and even in my short time here, there have been people driven away because of foulness like this. You were better for a while, but you are falling into old habits. Being right is not always the most important thing. You just haven't been around the Tubes long enough to see that all these arguments have the same shape, and the only way to win is not to play.

These things happen on the Internet, but around these parts, they almost never seem to happen when you're not here.

[Nevrmore]

I wasn't making a big deal about it, I was presenting an adverse opinion. sdhonda annoyed me when he missed the point of my post, I'll admit, but Evil Jim is the one who decided to call me a whiny bitch, which is the point when I got angry.

And I realize that sounds like I'm victimizing myself, but I've never changed the way I argue; on the internet, on this forum, or in real life. I haven't been "getting better," it's just been awhile since I was opposed by someone who responded to my initial post by blatantly insulting me. It tends to push my buttons.

[Kara]

In honour of this thread I'm listening to The Wall in its entirety right now. =)