“Yoko Ono, the widow of Beatle John Lennon, told Sky News that the entire Beatles back catalog will be available for sale on iTunes,” Anthony Ha reports for VentureBeat.
MacDailyNews Take: Sheesh. Leave it to Yoko.
Ha continues, “The story has been pulled down, presumably because it was published prematurely, but a site called Pocket-lint spotted the headline. If this is true, it’s thrilling news for Apple, the remaining Beatles, and, oh yeah, the one Beatles fan who hasn’t figured out how to copy their CD collection to their computer,” Ha reports.
Full article here.
However, according to a report published Tuesday by The Financial Times’ Joseph Menn, “[Apple's] San Francisco event will come the same day as the release of the remastered Beatles catalog, although that material itself won’t be available via Apple’s online store iTunes. ‘Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it’s not tomorrow,’ Ernesto Schmitt, EMI’s global catalog president, told the FT’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Regardless of when it happens, The Beatles arrival in Apple’s iTunes Store will be the final imprimatur in the minds of many people beyond a certain age. Yes, Apple’s iTunes Store has for some time now been the #1 U.S. music retailer, but you still couldn’t buy The Beatles there. When you can, Apple’s iTunes Store will become “real” to many millions who’ve never purchased a single track online. The Beatles’ stamp of approval will make iTunes Store and the concept of digital downloads something that’s finally worth looking into for many who haven’t done so yet. That’s the real significance of the arrival of The Beatles in Apple’s iTunes Store, not that those of us yet to reach a certain age have long ago ripped our Beatles CDs to iTunes.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]
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