Pink Floyd's win in a British High Court, preventing its record label, EMI, from "unbundling" its albums and selling songs individually online, is a victory for the band's artistic vision and the quaint notion of the concept album.
While the decision was based narrowly on the wording of the band's contract, and won't prevent fans from cutting up the albums anyway, either through illegal downloads, or even the old fashioned way by programming selections on a CD player, it shows that recording artists are not powerless in a radically evolving industry.
Pink Floyd was founded in the psychedelic sixties, more than three decades before the advent of iTunes and in an era that produced classic albums that were unified in theme, such as The Who's Tommy or T he Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here are of a similar kind; as the band's lawyer argued, they are "seamless pieces." In a sense they represent the antithesis of the iTunes' model, which gives listeners the chance to preview and purchase individual tracks.
The world has changed a lot since Floyd played London's acid houses. Careers of today's young artists, like the edgy and sui generis New York singer Sean Avolio, who is steaming up computer screens with his YouTube videos and has two songs available on iTunes, come from a very different place than Pink Floyd, and count on iTunes for their breakthrough. iTunes is clearly not a monolithic evil.
Whether a career is built by concept albums or individual songs, it is the artistic vision that ultimately merits respect. For that reason the British court ruling is welcome.