> 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.
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> 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.”
via [arstechnica.com](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/court-nixes-individual-track-downloads-of-pink-floyd-albums.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss)
Hey, I love Pink Floyd as much as the next guy, and I can’t fathom why anyone would want to buy just one of their songs, rather than listening to the whole album in context. But sorry, guys. This is going to end up being a poor business choice.
I almost always buy full albums on the iTunes Store. But I know I’m in the minority on that. The vast minority.
It just seems like a stupid move, to deny people the chance to own just that one song they like. But maybe there is something noble in the way they are standing on principle.
It’s important to consider WHY the album has died a slow death over the past decade or two. It has little to do with services like iTunes and Amazon MP3 selling individual tracks. That was a necessary REACTION to the death of the Album as a format.
No, the real reason the Album died is that record companies started pushing out albums full of junk from bands that only had one or two good songs to offer. They searched for the lowest common denominator in the pursuit of profits, as always. And people got fed up with it.
Pink Floyd, of course, can’t be accused of contributing to that phenomenon; they certainly didn’t write a bunch of “filler songs” to surround the one hit. But despite being the victims here, they are, nevertheless, selling music in the reality of that new market. Fighting this is just going to make it easier for haters to call them greedy.
