More trouble for battered Big 4 organised music gang member EMI.
The UK company which, together with Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony Music, has been trying to gain control of online music distribution by suing its own customers, claims everything in the garden is lovely, despite a crushing debt load and an alarming turnover of senior executives.
Now it’s being sued by one of its most famous and consistent earners, Pink Floyd, a member of the anti-P2P, anti-file sharing Featured Artists Coalition.
The surviving members are taking EMI to court over payment of online royalties and the marketing of their music, says the BBC, going on, “The group, signed to EMI since 1967, are disputing the way payments for their digital sales are calculated.
“They are also seeking a ruling on whether the label can sell individual tracks from their original albums.”
Within a few years of the contract being signed “both parties were faced with a whole new world of potential exploitation”, the Financial Times has Pink Floyd lawyer Robert Howe saying, continuing >>>
The legal dispute is over the calculation of royalties for online sales, which were in their infancy in 1998 but now represent more than a quarter of record company revenues, with a $4.2bn (£2.8bn) share of all sales .
Pink Floyd is also seeking a court ruling that EMI should not be allowed to “unbundle” songs from within albums and sell them individually online, which the band says EMI is already doing.
Pink Floyd is among bands which, through the FAC, are supporting the entertainment cartel Three Strikes business plan which seems set to become law in the UK.
A decision on the EMI case is expected tomorrow.