I agree. This was about making a record company honor their original contract, and on that point, I think it's a good win for the band.

On the other side of it, as much as I love David and Roger like the air I breathe, as much as I've listened to their albums over and over and over again, and as much as "Dark Side of the Moon" isn't quite the same when the songs are played individually...

They are still, at their core, individual songs, perfectly suited to standalone listening. That's what David and Roger wrote, was songs. That's their style, they write short form songs and string them together. Any whining on the band's part is just that: whining. They're trying to claim some sort of larger "long-form-work" artistic integrity that just, in my opinion, isn't there.

Yes the songs were tied together with a larger narrative thread. Yes, they produced the albums in such a way that the songs crossfaded with each other. But that's all it ever was, just crossfading songs together. Even a rock opera like The Wall has pieces that stand out and can be played on their own, and even the most tangled narrative sections of the album are still discrete songs.

Contrast this with, for example, "Thick as a Brick" which, for the most part, is truly an album-length single musical work with classical-style sections and movements. They even had to invent a weird bit in the middle, after the fact, to cover the transition between side 1 and side 2 of the vinyl LP format.

So although Pink Floyd are winning the war here (the "war" being, make the record companies do what's right), they're shooting themselves in the foot with this particular battle. Someone who wants just "Comfortably Numb" and can't (or doesn't wish to) purchase all of The Wall is just going to pirate it instead. So in the end, less money for EMI and for David and Roger. Fortunately, they're in a financial position where they can take that kind of hit for the greater good of the music industry as a whole.