Pink Floyd Give In To Digital Downloads 409
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."
The Gnome (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't Necessarily Blame Them (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It is always strange for me... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
If you want us to buy complete albums..... (Score:3, Insightful)
...make great complete albums.
(to be fair, pink floyd usually does. or at least did before I was born.)
Listening to an artist and a record company bicker over money by using "artistic integrity" is like listening to two hipsters argue by calling each other "hipster."
If your albums are such unsulliable masterpieces that should never be altered by the mere mortals that exist outside of a studio, then why release singles in the first place (granted, Pink Floyd doesn't often cut singles, but they have)? Why let other bands cover individual songs from your albums? Why slap together a greatest hits or box set package?
I really wish some artists would climb down off their high horses. At some point down the line, you made a conscious decision that playing in front of 30 people in a shithole bar in your hometown wasn't for you. Sadly, some of the bleacher seat dwellers from those bar days decided that choice makes you worthy of the moniker "sellout." You know what? Screw those selfish people. They're still sitting at the end of that bar, and they're not you. But with the ability to reach a mass audience comes a certain sacrifice. Well, not so much sacrifice as trade. You trade the ability to control every sniggling little detail of how the audience should perceive (and, to some extent, enjoy) your work in exchange for a heck of a lot more people getting to enjoy your work. Oh, and you get paid a bit better. Your audience now includes folks that just want the one little song they know & care about, and it'd be nice if you the artist would accept that not everyone thinks every last aural dripping of yours is solid gold.
Pink Floyd. Radiohead. Kid Rock. There's plenty of artists that just need to suck it up and accept that the world has changed. Consumers have picked up the tiniest inkling of purchasing power over the music industry, and we're going to use it. Call it packback for a lifetime of 20 bucks for an album with three worthy tracks.
True but irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:WRONG! Guess again. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay sure, normal people change and mellow with age, but I thought rockers all gradually turned into leathery fruitbats, a la Keith Richards and Ozzie Osbourne. More "embalmed" than "mellowed."
Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [musicoutfitters.com]
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 [cashboxmagazine.com]
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.