News

Adele‘s “21” album has now remained at the #1 position on the Billboard 200 chart for 16 weeks.

The move puts the British soul singer ahead of Pink Floyd and The Beatles who both had albums spend 15 weeks at #1: “The Wall” (1979) and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967), respectively.

Adele now holds the record for longest-running U.S. chart-topping album by a British artist.

You’ve won this round, Adele …

EMI Records has launched a Twitter account for Pink Floyd, apparently part of the label’s “Why Pink Floyd?” reissue campaign.

Follow the account @whypinkfloyd.

The account first tweeted June 28. At this writing, it has 899 followers, but EMI’s strategy would appear to be unidirectional: The account follows no one.

Here’s your chance to put “Floydian Slip” and Pink Floyd on the charts of Burlington, Vermont’s weekly alternative newspaper “Seven Days.”

The paper’s accepting ballots now for its annual “Daysies Awards.” Voters can have their say in determining the best in a variety of categories.

The closest they’ve got to a “Best Radio Show” category is Question #63: “Best Local Radio DJ.” Though our show’s syndicated to 30 stations, Burlington is our home base. We’re heard in Burlington on WIZN 106.7 FM and WBKM.org. Host Craig Bailey lives in adjacent Winooski.

So hit the Web and vote your conscience.

Rules dictate you have to answer a minimum of 50 questions. While you’re at it, suggest a new category of “Best Radio Show” at the end of the survey.

Deadline to vote is 5 p.m. EDT Friday, June 24.

Funny side-note: Several years ago we managed to get Burlington’s daily Gannett paper to cry uncle just hours after making such a request to you crazy diamonds. The category was “Best Vermont Web Site,” and floydianslip.com won by a landslide.

“Seven Days” is using venerable survey site SurveyMonkey, so can certainly handle the traffic. Let ’em have it …

If we told you members of a Pink Floyd cover band allegedly liked to unwind after gigs by smoking pot back at the hotel room, would you be surprised? What if we told you another band member had brought suit against them for doing the very same?

Singer Graham Heath, who has worked with San Diego-area tributes Pink Froyd and Pink Floyd Experience, is suing band-mate and guitarist Tom Quinn and band reps Annerin Productions and Jeff Parry Promotions on seven counts.

Legalize aside, Heath’s major beef is that his complaint about fellow band-mate’s proclivity to the herb resulted in his unlawful termination.

The suit runs deeper than that, with phrases like “breach of contract,” “defamation of character,” and “false light” popping up. But that first one is enough to harsh the mellow of any self-respecting axeman.

Read more at the San Diego Reader.

Let’s hope the guys can patch things up and make good at some charity event reunion 20 years down the road.

A school for at-risk teens founded by Pink Floyd in the early 1970s is about to close, after losing funding from its local council.

London’s Schoolhouse Education was started with help from the band, which raised £1,000 for it at a 1972 Oxfam gig at Wembley Empire Pool.

The school’s Lewisham site will close due to declining enrollment and budget cuts. Its Greenwich facility will remain open.

Headteacher Lynda Smith told the News of the World the school “would not exist if it wasn’t for Pink Floyd.”

Pink Floyd has signed a new five-year contract with its long-time record label EMI Music.

According to an EMI press release, under the new agreement, EMI will continue to market and distribute the band’s catalogue, and “all legal disputes between the band and the company have been settled” as a result of the new deal.

Relations between the band and its label had been contentious, as Floyd brought suit against EMI for alleged unpaid royalties, and for selling its tracks piecemeal, an industry practice called “unbundling,” which Floyd claimed was prohibited by the band’s contract.

“Pink Floyd are one of the most important and influential bands of all time and I know I speak for everyone at EMI when I say that it is a privilege to have the opportunity to work with them,” EMI Group CEO Roger Faxon said. “We’re looking forward to continuing to help the band reach new and existing fans through their incredible body of work.

“And, by the way, which one’s Pink?”

(We added that last part ourselves.)

The British Court of Appeal has effectively sided with Pink Floyd when it said the band’s individual songs cannot be sold against its wishes.

This afternoon the court dismissed an appeal by record label EMI, which had appealed a High Court decision on the matter.

Lawyers for the band had argued Floyd’s 1999 contract with EMI prohibited the selling of individual tracks, something much more common with the advent of digital downloads.

Read more in our March 9 post: “Pink Floyd sues EMI over online sales.”

Pink Floyd‘s post-“Dark Side of the Moon” catalog has been removed from digital retail sites such as iTunes and Amazon.com following the lapse of record label EMI‘s contract with the band June 30.

EMI continues to sell CD copies that it already has in stock, but won’t be able to manufacture new copies of post-“Dark Side” albums until, and if, it signs a new contract with the band.

Floyd’s albums following 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon” were originally issued by Columbia. EMI acquired the rights to them in 2000. Pre-“Dark Side” albums are unaffected and still available as hardcopies and digital downloads from EMI.

This latest development is unrelated to a London High Court ruling that sided with the band, which argued EMI didn’t have the right to sell its tracks online individually, a practice known as “unbundling.”

Reuters reports the band’s management has been shopping its back catalog around to labels for a new licensing deal for 18 months, but the high asking price has turned away a number of labels.

Floyd is one of the biggest selling recording acts of all time. Since 1991, the band’s albums have sold 36.2 million copies in the United States, including 654,000 in 2009 and nearly 311,000 in 2010.

As an example of how digital sales have contributed to Floyd’s volume, consider this: According to Reuters, in the two months leading up to the expiration of EMI’s contract, fans were buying about 1,000 digital copies of “The Wall” a week. That number is now practically zero.