6 Music - Music News

Elbow singer Guy Garvey has called for artists to be given the right to choose whether tracks on their albums are split up and sold individually on digital services such as iTunes.

Garvey was speaking in the wake of a recent court victory for Pink Floyd. A judge decided their contract with EMI, which stipulates that their songs should not be sold separately, should apply to online sales as well as physical formats.

Garvey told 6 Music's The Music Week that decisions about how their music is sold "should reside with the artist."

“It’s a matter of artistic integrity. If the end game for you is an album, you should be able to sell it as an album.

“If the end game for you is a collection of songs, which for many people it is, then that’s how your music should be enjoyed as well.

“If you write a collection of songs, then it’s the same as having a book of short stories. But if you write novels with chapters, that’s how your music should be experienced.”

Fans can buy full albums on Apple’s iTunes, but artists and record labels are also required to make the vast majority of tracks available on their own.

“iTunes is trying to protect consumer choice, that’s the way they genuinely see it. But that isn’t fair to the artist,” Garvey said.

"It’s something that’s really, really important to me because that’s what my band do - we make albums."

Guy Garvey

“It’s not that the album is the only way you should listen to music, far from it. I just think it should be the choice of the musician [as to] how their work is sold.”

Garvey said it was important “to protect the album as an artform”.

“This victory for Pink Floyd will just help to raise the debate. It’s something that’s really, really important to me because that’s what my band do - we make albums.

“Every single second on every Elbow record has been considered and debated and argued about, and for it to be then somebody else’s decision as to how that’s sold, I just don’t think that’s fair.”

Garvey and his Elbow bandmate Craig Potter have just finished producing I Am Kloot’s new album.

“The last thing you do is decide where the track marks are – the point at which every track will start,” he explained.

“You work on it as an album. The track order is really, really important. And then it’s carved up and sold how other people want it to be sold.”

Elbow would not stop people from downloading individual tracks, he said, but added that there may be occasions where some songs should be sold together.

“Occasionally we might decide that one track is only for people who’ve enjoyed the whole album because it only works in that context, or that two or three songs here and there need bundling together and should be listened to as a three-song experience.”

Pink Floyd’s songs are still available on iTunes, but the court case, which is still ongoing, may require them to be removed in due course.

Other acts, though, have abandoned the album format and prefer to release single songs on their own. Ash, for example, are mid-way through their A-Z series of 26 single releases, with one coming out every fortnight.