I expect you’ve now heard the news that Pink Floyd were victorious in their legal case against troubled record label, EMI, which reached its conclusion yesterday.

In a lawsuit filed last April, lawyers acting for the band argued that EMI should not be entitled to sell Pink Floyd’s extensive back catalogue – a back catalogue second only to that of the Beatles’ in terms of value – as individual tracks online so as to “preserve the artistic integrity of the albums”.

EMI argued that the contentious clause in Pink Floyd’s latest contract, signed in 1999, five years before the boom in legal digital downloads (which states that they have no right to sell any of Pink Floyd’s music as single tracks other than with the band’s express permission), only applied to physical copies and not digital ones.

EMI were ordered to pay an estimated £60,000 in costs, with fines still to be decided, and banned from selling Pink Floyd’s music online.

A challenge on the amount of royalties that band members receive from online sales has also gone in the way of Pink Floyd. It is the first royalties dispute between artist and record company ever to be held in private, as per EMI’s wishes.

So, a triumph for art over corporatism… or all a bit unnecessarily precious? Would you do the same for your music if you felt it were open to exploitation and if, through a lifetime of commercial accomplishment (which had created successful careers and all its trappings for many others, don’t forget), you felt you had very much earned the right to protect your work from being dissected and packaged in more profitable bite-size pieces to suit interests other than your own?

Are you disappointed that you may soon be unable to individually purchase Pink Floyd tracks online, or would you always choose an album in its entirety because of its characteristic “seamless” nature? Should it matter if the creators of the music would ideally prefer you to listen to their work as one continuous piece, or should the consumer always have the right to choose?

It’s cheaper to download an album than each of its tracks individually, after all.

Besides, isn’t love for the mellifluous the reason why such effort went into making Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd what it is (and why familiarity with the albums from which the songs were taken meant that, for many, Echoes didn’t really work)? That wasn’t merely a carve-up job with the songs idly presented in any old order.

Go on, as NME’s Luke Lewis set me off with his blog post yesterday, which songs – from any classic album, not just Pink Floyd’s – could you live without if you chose to purchase digitally rather than in the formats that many of us still cherish.

I’ll go first: Blood on the Tracks’ frenetic ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ by Bob Dylan. There, I said it. (Forgive me, Bob.) More often than not, it gives me an instant headache. As does Don Henley’s ‘Man With a Mission’ (from Building the Perfect Beast). But I can skip these songs when my head is feeling particularly delicate and they remain part of two of my favourite albums regardless. Granted, when purchased, there was no option to pick and choose each song, nor to preview them freely at leisure. However, I still feel that today’s wider choice is mostly irrelevant to me when it comes to downloading music, and surely this should be all the more true when it comes to concept albums.

In fact, of Pink Floyd’s more obvious concept albums, you’d be hard pressed to find a track that does not segue at either its beginning or end.

Can you imagine ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ not turning into ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’? Or ‘Overture’ from The Who’s Tommy not concluding with the joyous announcement that ‘It’s a Boy’?

I’d enjoy sharing your examples of the perfect song segue, if you care to.

So, lots of questions to end the week with and perhaps to aggravate you well into the weekend, but I have (almost) managed to refrain from asking whether we should condone public flogging as the only punishment befitting the heinous crime of savagely butchering Dark Side of the Moon.

Now, there’s a thought… Dare I suggest that maybe EMI got off lightly?

Ah, this year’s releases, as the typically uncomplicated title already said. Now, I realise that we’re barely three months into the year, but I think it’s started with abundant promise. Have you heard anything that particularly caught your ear?

Two albums released (in the UK) this week – yesterday, in fact – which I’m enjoying are Man Up by The Blue Van and Beat the Devil’s Tattoo by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. I do think I should have saved more than £1-a-time by downloading and forgoing all that awful plastic, but that’s another matter entirely.

Marcus Bonfanti’s What Good Am I To You?, released last month, is also one to look out for. He’s touring at the moment, with tickets extremely reasonably-priced.

The above- and below-mentioned artist names, you’ve probably already realised and maybe even clicked out of curiosity, double as links to respective MySpace pages, should you care to give their tunes a few moments of your time.

Free downloads provide a good way of adding new material to your music collection. Here’s one from MGMT, and here’s another – it’s from Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back. Produced by Bob Ezrin, it’s a collection of orchestral covers of songs such as David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ and Elbow’s ‘Mirrorball’, to perhaps give two of the more enticing examples.

If you know of any other goodies, and they must be legal downloads, don’t forget, please don’t keep them to yourself.

Which as-yet unreleased albums are you most looking forward to? New releases are expected from Arcade Fire, The National, Radiohead, R.E.M. and U2 this year. The one I most eagerly anticipate, though, is a fresh offering from Fleet Foxes.

Black Rock by Joe Bonamassa comes out later this month, too…

And speaking (or blogging, rather) of guitarists, there’s also a ‘new’ Jimi Hendrix album out; called Valleys of Neptune, it’s made up of previously unreleased songs, and you could win a copy here, courtesy of the nice people at Fender. Good luck.

Your thoughts on any of these, plus recommendations for others, are, as usual, appreciated; as were the birthday messages for David, thank you all for those.

You never know, 2010 could turn out to be as good a year for music as… 2006?

The blog calendar rather than my increasingly blurred memory informs me that many a blogger celebrates a birthday this month, so I’d like to express a joyful “Happy Birthday!” to Stephen for today, to Susan and Thomas for tomorrow and to everyone else who will be observing the anniversary of their birth thereafter; including David, it goes without saying, whose birthday is on Saturday.

As I know that you’d like to do the same, because some of you have already started, I’ll let you get on with it.

My thanks, on David’s behalf, for the well-wishes.

If you’d like to continue discussing the illustrious John Peel and the great many Peel Sessions of note, you are very welcome to do so (but here, not here, please).

According to Friday’s Times, as part of an attempt to cut costs, the BBC plans to shut down two of its radio stations by the end of 2011. One of these is BBC Radio 6, better known as 6 Music.

Naturally, online campaigns protesting against the proposals have sprung up, and one name that has been mentioned repeatedly is that of much-loved and greatly-missed DJ, John Peel, who died suddenly following a heart attack in 2004.

As Phill Jupitus so simply yet perfectly put it, killing off 6 Music would be “an affront to the memory of John Peel.” David Bowie added that “6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters like John Peel alive, and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame.”

Best known for his legendary Peel Sessions, which began in September 1967 and ran for 37 years, John Peel undoubtedly helped launch many a career, often by championing music that others would not play. In a 2002 BBC poll to discover the 100 Greatest Britons, he was even voted 43rd, some recognition for his services at BBC Radio 1 and with pirate radio station, Radio London, before that.

For anyone passionate about music, his Top Gear show on Radio 1 every Tuesday and Thursday night made for essential listening. Due to Musicians’ Union rules, he had to include a sizeable portion of non-recorded music in each programme, and, mercifully, live recordings were preferred to the usual chatter.

There exists a vast archive of Peel Sessions, containing 4,000 in all by more than 2,000 artists; including six by Pink Floyd and many from associated acts such as Roxy Music, Roy Harper and Robert Wyatt. Browse by artist or by year.

And so we return to 6 Music…

If you’d like to hear any Peel Session again, Marc Riley invites listeners to share which session they’d most like him to play – and why.

Everyone can listen to 6 Music online, so what better way to help a station in distress?

If you could, I’d like lots of Peel appreciation, as well as Sessions, today.

My favourite has to be Syd Barrett’s. Accompanied by David with Jerry Shirley on drums, recorded in February 1970 and aired the following month, this was later released on Peel’s Strange Fruit label and is an absolute must for any Syd fan.

Thoughts on 6 Music and the BBC in general are also quite welcome; I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking up other imaginative ways in which the corporation could cut back, rather than by scrapping their only radio station with a genuinely ‘alternative’ playlist and where, in true Peel tradition, new acts can be heard on a daily basis.

By the way, if you missed the John Peel tribute single – a version of the Buzzcocks number, ‘Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)?’, featuring David on rhythm guitar and benefiting Amnesty International – do look/listen out for it.