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Jobs' Mob loses Pink Floyd

by on18 August 2010
apple

iTunes becomes comfortably numb
It seems that Apple's grip on the music industry is a little lighter than Steve Jobs would like.

Mega band Pink Floyd, which made the greatest selling album of all time, Dark side of the Moon, has pulled its catalogue from iTunes. The problem is that Apple's view of music is not the same as some of the artists and this one shows Jobs does have the total control he would like.

Pink Floyd's contract with EMI covering albums post "Dark Side of the Moon" expired on June 30. This meant that popular albums which were distributed by EMI, including "Wish You Were Here," "The Wall," and "Animals," were removed from the iTunes Music Store, as well as Amazon.com and other digital music sellers. Some material is still there though, such as the "Oh By the Way" studio album boxset available on iTunes and released in 2008 by EMI.

Pink Floyd has won a lawsuit against EMI in March, to deliberately stop it flogging songs on services like iTunes. A High Court in the UK determined that the band could "preserve the artistic integrity" of whole albums by not breaking them up into individual song sales. So Pink Floyd wants you to have the whole album or nothing.

It is Jobs' Mob, and EMI's insistence, that songs be sold as singles on iTunes, which has stopped the The Beatles back catalogue being sold in Apple's walled garden.

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