The legendary ‘Wish You Were Here’ rockers began proceedings over their entitlement to royalties from the record company, and how they are calculated today (09.03.10).
The band’s lawyer, Robert Howe QC, said in court the group want to “know where they stand as a matter of contract,” and that they are concerned about online sales of their tracks. He questioned EMI’s ‘‘entitlement to sell individual tracks, or indeed any tracks, otherwise than in the original configuration of the Pink Floyd albums.”
He further argued the band have a contractual clause which “expressly prohibits” the selling of their tracks, either physically or online ”other than in their original configuration” – in other words, the band’s albums can only be sold as a whole body of work rather than as individual tracks. Howe added: “Both parties were faced with a whole new world of potential exploitation,” which has developed through changes in the way music is distributed since the group’s last record contract was negotiated in 1999.
Howe also said EMI had argued the contractual agreement only applies to physical product and not online, which he argued “makes no commercial sense”. Pink Floyd – whose album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is one of the biggest selling of all time – signed with EMI in 1967 and are the label’s second most successful artist after The Beatles. Struggling record company EMI reported in February it made a £1.5bn pre-tax loss last year.
