Pink Floyd Sue EMI Over Downloads

The surviving members of Pink Floyd -- guitarist David Gilmour, bassist Roger Walters and drummer Nick Mason -- faced their label EMI in the High Court yesterday (March 9) in a dispute over royalties for downloads.

The dispute centres around two issues. Firstly, the band believes that its been underpaid and secondly, it accuses the label of not seeking their permission to sell songs individually. Crucially, a clause in the band's states that "there are no rights to sell any or all of the records as single records other than with [Pink Floyd's] permission."

Pink Floyd argue that this clause -- drawn up in 1999 and five years before the first legal downloads -- includes all formats of their material while EMI contends that this only applies to physical sales of their albums.

Robert Howe, QC for Pink Floyd, told the court that the band wanted their work to be packaged and sold as albums for both artistic and commercial reasons.

"It is well known that Pink Floyd albums form seamless pieces," he said. "They want to retain artistic control, ensuring exploitation of albums, not singles."

Elizabeth Jones, EMI's QC, responded by saying that the word "record" in the clause should only be referred to in terms of physical product and therefore could not be applied to downloads.

Since being taken over by equity firm Terra Firma in 2007, the label has lost a number of high profile names including Sir Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Radiohead. More recently, the beleaguered label denied controversial plans to sell off the legendary Abbey Road studios though it did manage to close down the Olympic Studios with the minimum of fuss last year.

A judgement is expected to be made on Thursday (March 11).