The Beatles On iTunes

Yesterday Apple put a big old teaser up on their homepage for an unknown announcement to occur today. Speculation ran rampant from the delayed iOS 4.2, to iTunes Streaming to a release of the Beatles catalog on the iTunes store. Well, it was the latter. They have 13 albums on the store now, and a $150 box set. So here's hoping that we get that iPad multitasking yet this November.

Comments

White Album

[Hatta]

Oh, so now I've got to buy the White Album *again*?

Re:White Album

[hedwards]

I'm pretty sure that was a reference to MiB.

Re:White Album

[TheWanderingHermit]

Just the Beatles?

But this is was a world changing announcement. They've made us wait for several days and pundits have been speculating on this for all that time.

It's a big deal.

Really big.

I know, since Apple said it would change my world.

It's not like it's something trivial that won't effect most iPod or iPhone or iMac users, is it?

Re:White Album

[TheRaven64]

I wouldn't read too much into that. Apple stock is always very volatile after each of these announcements. Lots of people either short or buy stock just before the scheduled announcement time and it takes a day or two for it to return to normal. You'll notice that the graph has a big spike just before the announcement, presumably caused by a lot of people buying in anticipation of something shiny. The dip is caused by them now selling at a loss (which is pretty stupid, because if they hung onto it they could probably sell at a profit in six months or less).

Re:White Album

[mcgrew]

Back in the USSR, the White Album buys YOU!

Re:White Album

[mcgrew]

Or sample it from the LP like everyone else over 40.

Re:White Album

[jonbryce]

I don't think it will be that big a deal money-wise. Most Beetles fans will have already ripped their CDs onto their iPods. Yes they will sell some Beetles tacks on iTunes, but compared to all the big releases that go on iTunes from time to time, this is probably nothing special. Stockholders were probably expecting something like a Verizon version of the iPhone which would bring a lot more customers to Apple.

Re:White Album

[Low Ranked Craig]

This. I used to hold Apple stock, and I learned not to watch the stock after these announcements. Apple is a heavily traded stock and people make (and lose) a lot of money churning the stock. All-in-all though, I find this announcement to be underwhelming. I know that a lot of people consider the Beatles to be one of the top bands if not the top band, but really? Dr. Ebbetts solved this problem long ago, and if you're a true Beatles fan you've got the music in iTunes, or wherever, already.

I just torrented a bands entire discography last night, simply because I don't want to spend the time ripping 30 CDs. I bought the vinyl, re-bought the CDs when they were releases in the 80's ($25 a pop in 1986 dollars, or $48) and I bought all the new stuff on CD when it came out. I have no intention of paying $150 or $200 to download compressed .mp3/4 files for music which in most cases I've paid for twice, and in some cases three times.

Re:White Album

[somersault]

Anyone that really liked the Beatles would have already bought and ripped the remastered albums from last year though, or have had them even before that. I kind of assumed I didn't like the Beatles until Beatles Rock Band came out.

Now I know I like them, but unfortunately for Apple I hate iTunes. I bought a couple of their CDs which I've ripped (well actually I bought the CDs and illegally downloaded the contents, but the net result was the same!). I'm holding off on the rest until Amazon release them on their MP3 store, for cheaper than the CDs.

Re:White Album

[Egdiroh]

I think the real story is that you're an alien from a planet on which several days can occur in the span of 24 earth hours. That teaser went up just a day ahead of the announcement.

Besides the Beatles are pretty much the best selling band of all time. In the 2000s only eminem sold more records then the Beatles. In a decade three full decades after the broke up, and with out a new medium to be released on they were the second best selling artist. They may not be a big deal to you but they are a pretty big deal.

Re:White Album

[NatasRevol]

I kept thinking AAPL was a heavily traded stock. Until I saw the ETFs or most stocks in the DJIA. It's volume is really like that of any other large cap stock.
AAPL - ~20M/day

C - ~500M/day
MSFT - ~60M/day
INTC - ~65M/day

SPY - ~180M/day

Re:White Album

[nabsltd]

The 24 bit lossless release from late last year is a dramatically better mastering than I've heard before.

The 24-bit lossless could have been more accurate than the CDs, if they had not had the dynamic range compression applied, but at least some comparisons show that this is not case.

So, they might be "better" to some ears, but that seems to be the same group of ears that have remastered the Beatles albums before, with each one being worse than the last. The engineer doing the mastering on this last release admits to adding dynamic range compression, which by definition loses some of the original sound.

Big

[inpher]

This is big, at least for Steve Jobs and Apple. Steve is a huge Beatles fan and the distinction between Apple and Steve Jobs is blurry at best.

Re:Big

[UnknowingFool]

Isn't this the first time that the Beatles' catalog will be offered online? Legally of course.

Re:Big

[PatHMV]

I can't tell if you're being pedantic or stupid. I'm leaning toward pedantic asshole at the moment, as you are hyper-technically correct but not actually answering the question which anybody over the age of 5 understood was being asked.

Yes, CDs are "digital" and they are being sold "online." That's not what UnknowingFool was asking, of course. He is correct that this is the first time the Beatles' catalog will be offered online for downloading, legally.

If you don't already....

[Slash.Poop]

If you don't already own every Beatles album, I feel sorry for you.

Re:If you don't already....

[Raumkraut]

Meh. The Beatles are overrated.

Re:If you don't already....

[Anonymous Coward]

Every note the Beatles played isn't sacred. They were a good band. Some of their music still holds up well. But they're not Gods. Most of their stuff is pretty forgetable. Your music taste isn't any better than the next guys except for in your own mind. Get over yourself.

Re:If you don't already....

[slim]

Meh. The Beatles are overrated.

I tend to agree, but only because they are so very, very, unquestioningly highly rated by so many.

It's also easy to dismiss them, as an overreaction to the adulation. Your post underrates them.

A few hours with Beatles Rock Band (which is a great motivator for attentive listening) will remind you that they *were* very good indeed.

Re:If you don't already....

[BitZtream]

Why, because we didn't buy into their self absorbed crying about how their 'art' should be sold.

They aren't that good, seriously. When people and companies think they are so special that they will not allow you to buy something in an alternate form when there is massive demand because they are greedy self entitled fucks ... you should probably shop elsewhere so they get the point. Of course its too late for that, so instead you're just going to keep getting ripped off by paying $130 for a boxed set that costs them literally $5 to make, or $150 that cost them $0.05 to let you download.

At this point, anyone who buys anything Beatles related is rather retarded for doing so.

Re:If you don't already....

[vlm]

If you don't already own every Beatles album, I feel sorry for you.

Does borrowing your grandfathers copies count? They are interesting, but with the cultural reference points being half a century ago, they are kind of hard to relate to like the kids half a century related to them. One of those "you had to be there" moments.

Re:If you don't already....

[BadAnalogyGuy]

That's not really true, though. Every generation has its superstars.

The Beatles are just your grandpa's Justin Bieber.

Re:If you don't already....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not overrated, but played to death and embraced by mainstream society to the point that any rock-and-roll rebellion aspect is gone.

Re:If you don't already....

[paiute]

I liked many of their songs the first 200,000 times I heard them.

Re:If you don't already....

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, no band could live up to the hype the Beatles get. Not even the Kinks.

Re:If you don't already....

[ProppaT]

Agreed. I think the Beatles inspiration at the time is worth a hell of a lot more than their music.

* - Paul pushed Badfinger and basically kick starting the Power Pop genre
* - Lennon inspired Harry Nilsson to release some absolutely classic albums
* - They acted as a think tank for George Harrison. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass is worth more than the collective whole of the Beatles catalog, imo
* - Basically caused Brian Wilson to go nuts. We wouldn't have Pet Sounds or Smile without the Beatles.
* - Without the Beatles we wouldn't have The Monkees. Without The Monkees, Michael Nesmith probably wouldn't have had a solo career. Michael Nesmith basically stands in equal footing with Graham Parsons as far as creating the Alt Country genre. You can think of Michael Nesmith and Graham Parsons as the 70s versions of Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy as far as Alt Country importance goes.

You can't deny the impact they had at the time, although you can debate the merits of a lot of their catalog until you're blue in the face.

Re:If you don't already....

[slim]

A few hours with Beatles Rock Band

And this is the extent of your musical knowledge, no wonder you like the Beatles.

I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.

I do play real guitar - among other instruments - and take pleasure in more complex forms than The Beatles, as well as in more minimal and direct music.

However I'll continue to defend Guitar Hero / Rock Band as a tool for music appreciation. It draws your attention to details of the parts that are easy to overlook. It's a good way to actually concentrate on music -- few people nowadays listen to music and give it their full attention.

I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting. There's a hell of a lot of variety in there: She Loves You, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I am the Walrus, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Helter Skelter, I Got A Feeling ... all very different from one another.

Re:If you don't already....

[mcgrew]

I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.

That's because you're too young to be able to see what an effect the Beatles had on music and indeed, society (actually, societies) in general.

When you've heard something all your life, it's commonplace.

Re:If you don't already....

[MozeeToby]

I won't disagree with you, but only because they are overrated in the same way that Tolkien is overrated. That is, if you look at him compared to contemporary sources, he appears unimaginative, derivative, and even predictable. And then you take a big step back and you suddenly realize that there was nothing before it to be a derivative of. The started something new, something that took on a life of it's own, and they were so iconic that you can still hear their sounds in music today, 50 years later.

Re:If you don't already....

[pitchpipe]

That's because you're too young to be able to see what an effect the Beatles had on music and indeed, society (actually, societies) in general.

Yeah. Now get the fuck off his lawn!

Re:If you don't already....

[Omestes]

If all music has to stand on is rebellion, and once that aspect is gone it is not longer interesting, it was bad music to begin with. It was a purely cultural phenomena, meaning shallow and transient, meaning the people who listened to it were shallow and transient.

This is why around 90% of punk sucks, even before 1979. This is why 90% of everything probably sucks, but we just don't realize it until the trend moves on. This is why most of the crap I listened to in high school (metal and grunge) has become JUST crap. It was only interesting in that specific cultural time and place, but was completely uninteresting. At best it was a reaction to some events that are no longer relevant, at midling it was a mere scene, and at worst an act of marketing and targeted demographics.

Some of it survived very well, meaning it has more to it than just a social trend, it was musically interesting, even beyond its cultural relevance. The Clash (pre-80's) survived, Zeppelin survived, Bob Dylan, and a large selection of classic blues survived. The Beatles, for the most part, did too. Well, they did if you weed McCartney's influence out of it, and focus mostly on the stuff created after some wonderful guy gave Lennon LSD. Some of it is just interesting, some of it is musically sound, and some of it is absolute crap and marketing.

A vast amount of the music I used to like bores me now, but there are some survivors. And I am long past my rebellious phases. Some of it was actually decent music in the long run.

Time generally weeds out all the shit. For every Beethoven there were 600000 guys fiddling with a piano who managed mild popularity, but later vanished.

Re:If you don't already....

[imakemusic]

Be that that as it may, and maybe I'm A Loser, I just don't Dig It. I Don't Want To Spoil The Party but I Want To Tell You, From Me To You, how I feel. You'd have to be a Madman to deny their impact and they certainly caused something of a Revolution but I've listened to them, Not A Second Time, but a hundredth time, and I'm So Tired of their sound I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry. Maybe When I Get Home I'll have another listen and I'll Get Back to liking them. From A Beginning to The End they certainly wrote a lot of songs but that was a Long, Long, Long time ago. But We Can Work It Out. Everyone has their own tastes. You just have to Think For Yourself and Let It Be. The Things We Said Today may not be true in a few years. I could be wrong but, hey, That'll Be The Day!

Anyway, I'll Be On My Way.

Re:If you don't already....

[Gizzmonic]

"The thing about 'Run For Your Life' is, I always hated that song..." - John Lennon

Re:If you don't already....

[CrashNBrn]

$150 for 40 year old music as degraded-format MP3's is totally worth it. (Abbey Road was released in 1970). Soon it will be super-classic (50 years old) and the Distributors will want $300.00

The fact that the laws allow corporate renumeration still for 40-year-old tunes is almost warrant enough to disregard copyright. We'll likely see it on blueray and the next format and the next. As is it's already seen 7 format releases: Album (78/45/33), 8-Track, Tape, CD, Album (vinyl-again), Rock-Band, MP3s

There are many bands who have excessive catalogs of music - that I just can't be bothered to wade thru. Any band that's survived 20 years has had their label push numerous "Best of" compilations. The same songs will appear again and again, yet each time there will be one or two new tracks.

Perhaps it's just me but considering all that, older CDs/Music are valued (by the owners/distributors) far too highly. If there were offers of "Buy this (new) Album get 1/2/3 previous albums for free, I would think many people including myself would purchase a lot more music.

I certainly can't afford to buy all the music I would want, so instead I buy a handful of albums a year.

Re:If you don't already....

[bennomatic]

Except the Beatles didn't have to resort to autotune.

Re:If you don't already....

[oldmac31310]

gleaned not gleamed

Re:If you don't already....

[SETIGuy]

There were no downloads then, and LPs are far superior to any lossily compressed music.

Yeah, that's the popular meme. But of course the process of making LPs is lossy, as is recording to magnetic tape. When the music was remastered in the 80s, they tried to boost the low gain frequency bands, which annoyed the LP listeners who like the "warm" sound you get without high frequencies.. But you can always fix that digitally if you want. With appropriate band cuts, and addition of some hiss and pop, you too can make a CD sound like an LP. You might have to add some more band modification and some 60Hz hum to model that 1970s era amplifier and speakers. I'll be surprised if you could tell "lossy" 256kbps MP3 from the CD.

Re:If you don't already....

[petsounds]

Well, be surprised then, because I can definitely tell the difference between a 256kbps mp3 and a CD on a good stereo system. And I can definitely tell the difference between a lossless master file and a CD pressing. That 16 bit quantization and the frequency range clamping of CDs certainly cause degradation of the transients that give our brain more information about the sound we're hearing. I think the problem is, most people are listening with shitty systems or audio delivery devices (earbuds) that to most people the 192kbps mp3s sound just fine (and then wonder why their ears get "tired" so fast).

Not to say that vinyl mastering doesn't have its own problems, but a good mastering and vinyl presser can minimize that. And even with pristine digital audio we still have problems with bad DACs (or ADCs in the case of vinyl and most digital-based consumer amps), but the converters are at least a fixable problem from the consumer end. With vinyl, at least we can find a solution to preserve the extra frequency range as it comes out of whatever speakers we employ. The CD, and mp3s for that matter, well there's just no way to get those lost frequencies back, no matter how good our stereo is.

Good, but overrated products

[BadAnalogyGuy]

In a way, Apple and The Beatles are very similar. Both were pioneers in their industries. Both had throngs of loyal fans willing to do anything for them. Both are scarcely more than a thin veneer over the status quo.

It's a bit poetic that these two entities which have been at each other's throats over who has the right to call themselves a fruit now are hand in hand making money off the panting masses.

Apple's done it again.

Re:Good, but overrated products

[gad_zuki!]

>Both are scarcely more than a thin veneer over the status quo.

Oh, I wouldn't say that about the Beatles. If you look at the Beatles peers when they were active you'll see that they weren't just "white plastic on OEM crap." Lets skip past their early stuff which is admittingly cookie cutter to Rubber Soul's release in 1965. The Billboard top 100 had acts like Sonny and Cher and songs like "Wooley Bully." Or when the Beatles released Revolver in 1966, the charts were leading with stuff like the Mamas and Papas. Sgt Peppers was released in 1967 when the Billboards top song was stuff like I'm A Believer by the Monkees. Its weird to even think of them as competing peers considering how far and away Sgt Peppers is from anything mainstream release.

I think the Beatles really earned their reputation as game changers. They're one of the first rock bands to really begin exploring outside the mainstream, challenge the status quo, and succeeding at this without alienating listeners. Its odd to think that by 1969 they were pretty much done, but if you listen to a lot of the music from the 1970s you'll hear quite a bit of Beatles influence. I think they really wrote the template on how to make rock music that isn't just disposable catchy hits and could be something closer to fine art than just music to dance/get high/get laid to.

Re:Good, but overrated products

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The singlemost influential album and artist of the past 50 years? The one that not only changed the direction of music for decades but changed the culture of much of America and many other countries around the world?

1992: Dr. Dre's The Chronic.

End of story.

Re:Good, but overrated products

[StikyPad]

The Beatles had a couple of things on their side that these others didn't and that was better recording equipment and more ability (ie. Money) to tool around the studio getting the sound that they wanted.

Nonsense.

Pink Floyd recorded Piper At The Gates Of Dawn in 1967 in Abbey Road studios - same place and same time when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band. Various sources mention that both bands visited each other during the recording sessions in Spring 1967 (Pink Floyd visited The Beatles when the latter were recording It's Getting Better). 1. http://www.cs.umd.edu/~dekhtyar/pfdb/beatles.html 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd#The_Piper_at_the_Gates_of_Dawn

Floyd certainly admired the Beatles, and it would be splitting hairs to differentiate between admiration and influence -- they go hand in hand.

From the horses mouth, in an interview with Waters: You can draw a line between what I'm interested in and what I'm not interested in," he said. "On one side you can name Dylan and Lennon, who observe the world and have "feelings", and write songs directly from those feelings. On the vapid side you have pop groups who need material and write songs to fill the hole, rather than getting somebody else. But they might just as well get somebody else, because it's a manufacturing process. It's not poetry, because it doesn't spring from heart or guts or wherever John Lennon's or Dylan's songs came from. ... That's taken over an awful lot of the business. You could say, 'Well, why shouldn't it?' Absolutely no reason, so long as it doesn't take over and squeeze out the Lennons and Dylans because they're too good for it. 1. http://www.pinkfloyd-co.com/band/interviews/rw/rwmusician92.html

Certainly the revolution between 1965 and 1975 was a group effort, with many musicians involved, but clearly the Beatles were leading the charge. (And for what it's worth, I don't like or own any of the Beatles' music, though I've owned almost every Floyd album released and several bootlegs. These days I'm ambivalent about music because I'm tired of the old, and there's little new of value being produced.)

Cheaper to buy CDs

[LordKronos]

Meanwhile, the CD box set is selling for $130 on amazon (and I thought I read recently someone was offering it for around $100). I thought downloads were supposed to be cheaper than the physical CDs.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[SicariusMan]

I don't know about the CD set, but the iTunes version has the iTunes LP extras including two of their original concerts. I'm not a Beatles guy at all, as I'm under 35, but I do respect the influence they've had on music.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[UnknowingFool]

Downloads are really supposed to be more convenient than CDs. Brick and mortar stores do not have 24/7 hours. Online CD stores will take at least a day to ship. There is no worry about supply limits. And you can get the songs you want rather than the whole album. With a large number of albums like the box set, you don't have to spend any time ripping and encoding to your computer. Truthfully downloads are cheaper to manufacture than CDs. However markup is always affected by demand and consumer willingness to pay for convenience. I myself get CDs whenever possible but I usually get them used.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[Damien Clauzel]

$150 in iTunes US, and 149€ in iTunes France for the CD Box Set?

Damn you Apple and your currency rate! $1 != 1€, and the music files are the same all around the planet.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[onion2k]

I'm not a Mozart guy at all. I'm under 250 years old.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[Sygnus]

I've never had that impression. I thought it cost around $9.99 to download most complete albums off of itunes (I'm guessing I don't use itumes). I can pay this for most albums on amazon.com to get the physical disc + album art - DRM.

iTunes music hasn't had DRM for several years.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[TheRaven64]

I thought downloads were supposed to be cheaper than the physical CDs

Clearly you are new to the iTunes store.

Re:Cheaper to buy CDs

[pitchpipe]

I'm not a Mozart guy at all. I'm under 250 years old.

I knew Wolfgang Mozart. Wolfgang Mozart was a friend of mine. Beatle, you're no Mozart.

Sosumi

[slim]

And yet there's the trademark dispute over the Apple brand, the Beatles owning Apple Corps, and Jobs having Apple Computer.

When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were reviewed through Apple's legal department and they objected that the new system sound alert "chime" had a name that was "too musical", under the recent settlement. The creator of the new sound alerts for System 7 and the Macintosh Startup Sound, Jim Reekes, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and first quipped it should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on The Beatles' "Let It Be". When someone remarked that that wouldn't pass legal's approval, he remarked "so sue me." After a brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound's name as sosumi (a homophone of "so sue me"), telling the legal department that the name was Japanese and had nothing to do with music.

Re:Sosumi

[EvanED]

And yet there's the trademark dispute over the Apple brand...

Since apparently you weren't paying attention, there was the trademark dispute but it was permanently resolved years ago.

(BTW it's amusing that you use the sosumi example instead of when they later sued when Apple started iTunes -- which I felt they actually had a solid basis on which to stand.)

Re:Sosumi

[slim]

Twas a piece of historical trivia.

And the Sosumi anecdote is funny, whereas the iTunes bit is not.

Who cares?

[BitZtream]

Perhaps I just don't like the Beatles enough to think this is a good thing ... but ...

My solution to bands who 'refuse' to be put on iTunes, for any reason?

I don't buy their shit. I won't buy anything from the Beatles or Metallica ever again for that reason, even if they change their minds later.

You guys go cater to their self absorbed temper tantrums and sense of entitlement. I'll pass and buy things from people who actually appreciate my money.

Re:Who cares?

[demonbug]

Perhaps I just don't like the Beatles enough to think this is a good thing ... but ...

My solution to bands who 'refuse' to be put on iTunes, for any reason?

I don't buy their shit. I won't buy anything from the Beatles or Metallica ever again for that reason, even if they change their minds later.

You guys go cater to their self absorbed temper tantrums and sense of entitlement. I'll pass and buy things from people who actually appreciate my money.

My solution to people having tantrums because some person (or group) isn't doing what they think they should do is to laugh at them.

Seriously, do you have any idea how childish you sound? Somebody doesn't sell their stuff the way you think they should so you accuse them of having a tantrum? Talk about self absorbed...

I can't stand it when people get all pissy about an artist not wanting to break apart their album into individual chunks. I don't care what the artist's reason for this is, if it is valid concern for the artistic integrity of their work (I can see this for the later Beatles albums, though definitely not the early ones) or if they just think that they can make the most bucks off it that way; whining because they won't give it to you the way you demand it is just pathetic. They don't owe you anything. They created it, it is theirs to do with as they see fit - the only ones exhibiting a ridiculous sense of entitlement are the ones demanding that artists offer their work in a specific way because those artists somehow owe it to the consumer. Stunning hypocrisy and failure to think.

Re:Who cares?

[SydShamino]

The actual Beatles - Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr - have nothing against iTunes. McCartney's music has been available there for quite some time.

They lost control over their own music long ago. So you can avoid giving any money to the owners of the Beatles catalog, sure, but your rant about the artists' "self absorbed temper tantrums and sense of entitlement" is unwarranted.

Just like the announcement

[Lev13than]

O frabjous day!

The Beatles are on iTunes! Truly this is a day that we "will never forget".

Move over 7/25/2006 (remember - the day that Metallica finally joined the fold?), because 11/16/2010 is the new biggest day in the history of music. Ever.
 
Remember folks, your task for this morning is to delete the 100-200 Beatles songs in your iTunes folder so that you can download the exact same files from Apple.

*Sigh*...

[MikeRT]

It's a testament to baby boomer narcissism that this is such a BFD from Apple.

Big new software update? No. Verizon iPhone? No. ZOMG U CAN HAZ BEETULZ ON TEH iPhone NOW!

If Disney opened up its vault, that'd at least make sense since they stop publishing a lot of their animated classics for long periods of time.

Wait...

[orphiuchus]

Doesn't like half the money go to Michael Jackson's ghost or something? I guess its not a bad thing, hes going to need good heaven-lawyers to get out of the charges of molesting the Lindbergh baby.

Who are the Beatles

[goombah99]

Are they some new Boy band? Sorry if I'm out of the loop, Since I got to college I haven't had time for pop music since way before Cold Play hit the scene. $150 seems like a lot for such a new band, how much music could there be?

Re:Who are the Beatles

[goombah99]

Holy Lennon! They must be more popular than Jesus Christ!

Lame non-news

[airfoobar]

This is only news because the rights holders have been unable to make a rational business decision for such a long time, while the fans have been forced to cater to their own needs. It's much more interesting to know that the Beatles recordings will start entering the public domain in 2012.

Re:Lame non-news

[airfoobar]

Not if you are in the UK, where it's 50 years from creation of the recording.

Re:too late

[east coast]

Most people who wanted the Beatles catalog have probably owned it on CD for over 20 years and have already ripped it to their iPods.

While this is going to be a big stir for Apple, the truth of the matter is that most of the money they make from this is only going to be for the al a carte type crowd. I'm sure they will sell a ton of complete collections too but let's be honest; if you're over 25 and you don't own the Beatles stuff that you like? You're probably not going to buy whole albums here either....

Unless you're a total gimp who doesn't know how to rip a CD.

Jobs' Narcissism

[Doc Ruby]

Actually, this announcement's hype is testament to Steve Jobs' narcissism, and whatever is the corporate version of "narcissism" (monopolism?) over at Apple Records. Apple Records has been suing and attacking Apple Computer since the Apple ][, claiming "trademark" rights that don't exist (computers aren't music, even when computers play or sell music). "Beatles on iTunes" closes the "Apple vs Apple" spat that has kept Beatles music from Apple users for so long, even when it there was no possible combo. Which is probably a lot bigger deal to Jobs and Apple Records than it is to the public, even if Apple's music distribution is #1 and the Beatles recordings are still among the most popular music in the world.

Because Steve Jobs is a Baby Boomer whose narcissism crossed with Apple Records' narcissism is bigger than even the narcissism of the entire rest of the "Me Generation".

Re:Jobs' Narcissism

[TheRaven64]

It's a bit more subtle than that. The legal Apple vs Apple thing was resolve a while back, when Apple Computer Inc. bought the trademark outright and became Apple Inc. By this stage, Apple Records had sold all of the rights to anything Beatles related and so were irrelevant.

Apple Computer was originally named in part as an homage to Apple Corps because Steve Jobs was (and still is, apparently) a Beatles fan. He was somewhat put out when they saw this as trademark infringement rather than a compliment[1]. The ongoing lawsuits were a personal annoyance - as well as a business one - and probably a lesson to Steve about how destructive fanboyism can be (well, you'd hope). Getting The Beatles on iTunes was something he said that he wanted in interviews right back when iTMS launched, but until now the music has not been available for legal download anywhere. This is a personal coup for Steve Jobs - being able to distribute the music from the band that inspired him - and given the current Beatles sales is also probably going to be quite lucrative.

For the rest of us, it's a pretty dull announcement.

[1] Which somehow puts me in mind of Tom Lehrer's line: 'Copyright infringement is the sincerest form of flattery.'

Re:Don't for get the sound engineer

[MBGMorden]

And if I was an "audiophile" and cared about the pixie dust, I might care. Back in the real world, 90% of human beings won't be able to tell the difference between that rip that the "professional sound engineers" spent "months" on (which I highly doubt in the first place), and your 196Kbps rip using CDEX + LAME.

Re:Or you can download them for free

[MouseR]

Who says you have to? Do you feel pressured when a car company announces the current year`s model?

How about the autumn release of Levis jeans?

Heck... that pint of milk is dépassé by now. RUSH NOW to buy this week`s release!! ... or just realize you made a short-sighted comment and move on.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This affects nothing

[Myopic]

Yay! Wow, the Beatles are finally available on iTunes! Thank goodness, because nobody has ever been able to listen to Beatles music on their computers. Their refusal to sell their music in one specific outlet has completely prevented all computer users from enjoying MP3 recordings of Beatles songs. Finally, a Beatles song will appear on an iPod for the first time. Finally!

Re:Or you can download them for free

[delinear]

Besides, they broke up 40 years ago, most of this stuff was recorded before a lot of the people posting here were even born. This is the kind of stuff that should be in the public domain, if we didn't have ridiculous copyright periods that perpetuate the right to make money from the same content ad infinitum. People who rush out to buy this stuff again just give ammo to the labels demanding ever longer copyrights.

Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?

[name_already_taken]

That...doesn't make any sense.

Having a band like The Beatles on iTunes should send their stock skyrocketing. The amount of money all parties involved are going to make is going to be huge. If there's one band that people rebuy over and over again, it's The Beatles.

Except that many of their first-generation fans are now retirement age and just don't care to buy it in a new format.

If those folks had already re-bought it on every new format, then it follows that they already have it on CD.

Seriously, if you already had something on CD, why would you re-buy it on iTunes?

Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?

[tehcyder]

Seriously, if you already had something on CD, why would you re-buy it on iTunes?

It's digitally remastered, of course.

Down to a lower level of quality, obviously, but nonetheless digitally remastered.

Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?

[cayenne8]

You know.

If they would put out the box sets, more specifically, the MONO remastered box set they did a year or two ago...and put on iTunes in a lossless format, for a reasonable price.

I'd buy them.

Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?

[cayenne8]

"Do you even have a clue how good 256kbps AAC sounds?

Meanwhile, the rest of us will already be enjoying the content BEFORE we become too old to hear the difference, waiting for "the perfect version" to be released."

I have a stereo where you can hear the difference my friend.

And given that...why would I NOT want to purchase the highest quality (lossless) that could be easily available...and rip it to lesser quality formats for environments that are not ideal for listening (car, gym on iPod...etc).

And come on..storage isn't any type of restriction these days. 1 TB drives are going for under $89 these days. But if I downloaded lossless from iTunes (broadband connection is plenty fast)..I'd burn them on CD or DVD or the like for long term storage as well as for my media computer hooked to the stereo.

What can I say, I like to get the best version possible of anything I do these days at this point in my life. Why not? It is about quality over quantity.

Re:Why is this news?

[Cajun Hell]

When you do that, though, you deny the Beatles their incentive to create the music in the first place. If you like the Beatles, you might want to think about the consequences of your actions, before you condemn them to a life of poverty and obscurity.

Well, it would be a world-changing annoucement

[elrous0]

If the year was 1965, and we were undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit.

Re:Life is real

[somersault]

I had that same problem with Einstein. Clearly, I'm much smarter than him.

Re:great!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5960233/The_Beatles_For_iTunes_[Apple_Lossless]_compilation

Re:You don't want multi-tasking.

[Assmasher]

Well, having written both Android and iPhone applications, I can tell you that one OS was intended to run things like services and background processes, and the other was not. Apple likes to blame everyone else for their problems (or claim that everyone else has them), but creating a 'sort of' hybrid multi-tasking methodology of course leads to a problem like this. To be fair, the problem should be alleviated relatively shortly because app developers WILL learn how to live with the iOS shortcomings.

Re:Compact music

[nahdude812]

...or pop your CD into your computer and use iTunes to create high quality fully-tagged audio files out of it for no additional cost.