A piece of conventional wisdom about the nature of online music sales ran into a brick wall last week when a court ruled that Pink Floyd's landmark album Dark Side of the Moon cannot be broken up and sold as individual songs.

The British court ruling stopped EMI's single song sales from Dark Side and other Pink Floyd albums, pointing to a contract forbidding the band's albums from being sold in any other form without written consent. EMI had argued that the contract applied only to records, not downloads. The judge disagreed, saying the contracts protected "the artistic integrity of the albums." Many of Pink Floyd's albums are designed as continuous entities with songs flowing into one another. EMI will also have to pay the band's legal costs, estimated at £60,000.

How this will affect other bands and albums presumably will hinge on whether they got the albums-only stipulation in writing. Still, you have to wonder whether this restriction on digital music sales will have unintended consequences. If someone really just wants, say, "Money," will that person pony up for an entire digital album? Or will he look for other alternatives, such as borrowing the widely sold disc from a friend or (horrors) downloading it illegally?

See The Guardian.