Paul McCartney has told Billboard in an exclusive interview to be published tomorrow (May 11) “that a deal to finally make the Beatles catalog available for sale online is ‘virtually settled,'” Brian Garrity and Paul Sexton report for Billboard.
“Efforts to clear the Beatles-related music for digital distribution have been previously held up by a long-running trademark feud between iPod/iTunes-owner Apple Inc. and Apple Corps., the Beatles label. The two sides finally settled the dispute in February, opening the door to clear the catalogs for distribution via iTunes and other digital retailers,” Garrity and Sexton report.
Full article here.
First! I know this is stupid.
boy am I sick of hearing about the beatles and digital music already… just either put it up or don’t.
geez…
The settlement also requires the former Beatle to change his name to MacCartney.
I wil;l personally burn 1000 copies and give them away for free
Hey Paul
Whats better than 4 Roses on the piano ?
Here comes the sun…..
MW = “peace”
Boom! And boy, have we patented it. BOOM!
Bullshit. We’ve been reading this story every few months for five years now. The Beatles catalog on iTunes is our generation’s flying car.
@ Jooop
How can you compare the Beatles with a flying car? Nobody wants to hear Beatles.
‘Greedy Beatles miss the boat’ is the real headline as everyone has the Beatles on their iTunes already. Don’t you?
So earlier tonight my wife found a tick on the cat. We had to do the whole “hot match to the tick forcing him to back out” thing.
But I was thinking: That’s what McCartney and the Beatles remind me of. A tick. You know . . . bloodsuckers. Except substitute “money” for “blood”.
Hey, do ya thinka hot match’ll do the trick in McCartney’s case?
“Revolution” my ass!
Yaah, “Who Cares, except the press?” that’s a good one.
I think some of their titles should be changed nowadays, like …
“All You Need Is Cash”
-or-
I want you to pay me “Eight Days a Week” … bitch!
-and-
“I Am The Moneygrubber”.
Snooooooooze….wakeup…what, Beatles? I hate them and I grew up in the 70’s…goes back to sleep….
@ Jooop
The flying car is here! http://www.moller.com/m400.htm Just needs the funding and a real plan for making flight realistic to the average consumer. I read an article about how with some mass production that the M400 would cost about as much as the average SUV (30K-50K US)… and it also gets MUCH better MPG then the average SUV too! The things I see really holding it back is air traffic and FAA regulations. Think I’ll do some research on that later.
The Dude abides.
head:
Hey Paul
Whats better than 4 Roses on the piano?
2 lips on your organ.
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Now, someone explain this to me. What exactly is the benefit of carrying the Beatles catalog? Seriously. Is there a benefit aside from being able to claim, like the annoying little kiddies on MDN posts who say, “First!”
MDN: woman. As in “I am more interested in Helen Reddy’s catalog. I want “I Am Woman!” on iTunes!
And yes. There are Helen Reddy songs on iTunes. Hardly a definitvie collection, though.
It seems TheConfuzed1 isnt so confuzed after all !
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The beatles sucks about as much ass as the average entry in the eurovision song contest. Screw em!
Bring on the Trance and Synth!
Oh, and some 40s-50s Jazz.
The Beatles are newsworthy because Lennon and McCartney were 2 of the GREATEST songwriters of the 20th century. I am not saying “the” greatest because that is debateble.
To say you don’t like the Beatles is fine. To say that you think they sold out is also fine.
But to say they suck or that they were “just some band” proves your COMPLETE lack of knowledge about music. Love them or hate them The Beates influence on music is undeniable and irreplaceable. Countless bands, including many playing music today have either been directly influenced by the band or by someone who was influenced by the Beatles. (Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Green Day, the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Chemical Brothers, REM, the Velvet Underground, Beck, and on and on and on)
The reason they are stilll newsworthy is that 3 decades later people still listen. Let’s see where your life’s work is in 30 years.
Get a clue before you post!
Strangely, I have to agree with “All You Need”.
The Beatles were the first band to create musically literate rock/pop, by which I mean that they were capable of writing and arranging music with a wide variety of influences and styles.
Listen to some of the arrangements on songs like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and you can hear musical elements which reach back into the musical toolbox of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the palette of the great composers like Bach and Mozart.
Another fascinating thing about The Beatles was the sheer pace of their musical development: they went from relatively simple work like “She Loves You” to “Tomorrow Never Know” in four years.
You can probably find bands since who have evolved their styles at that kind of pace, but the key word is “since” and the key difference is having recording studios and technology which bear about as much resemblance to the tools available to The Beatles as a current Mac Pro bears to the original computers produced in Apple’s first garage.
BTW, I say all of this whilst not actually being a huge Beatles fan. Not liking their overall canon of work is one thing. Denying their contribution to the development of rock/pop, both as a business or an art-form is quite frankly ignorant prejudice.
“Listen to some of the arrangements on songs like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and you can hear musical elements which reach back into the musical toolbox of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the palette of the great composers like Bach and Mozart.”
George Martin was instrumental.
This could give the iPod market a booster shot by getting a lot of geezers to buy. If the Beatles keep delaying, their primary market will be dead, literally.
gu…
You’re right about Martin’s role as producer and mentor – and he did indeed play instruments on many Beatles tracks, but the chord progressions on Rigby are, by consensus, all McCartney’s work. Martin’s genius was in delivering orchestrations which leveraged his previous experience with EMI’s classical work.
However, even in Martin’s role (or the role of the staff at Abbey Road), The Beatles broke new ground. If you can think of another band in the mid-Sixties where the producer and engineers were effectively deployed to turn the recording studio into a musical instrument, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
However, if you want to pay respect to Sir George Martin, you’ll get no argument from me: EMI were stupid to lose his services when he could have been their Ahmet Ertegun or Berry Gordy, but such is the short-sightedness of much of the music industry.
Who cares except the press?
I like your tick analogy – I think it’s true as regards the Beatles and their remaining family members. I’m actually glad that M.J. owns part of their music catalog.
Incidentally, I had a friend who isn’t used to dogs, discover a tick on his female lab recently. He was going to do the match trick, too, but luckily his more canine astute wife stopped him and pointed out that was about to burn of the dogs eight nipples.
M
“. . . their primary market will be dead, literally.”
Which is exactly why I’ve decided to die figuratively.
“How can you compare the Beatles with a flying car? Nobody wants to hear Beatles.’
Well I think there are plenty of people that do, but still yeah there’s no comparison. The flying car is the #1 vaporware of all time.
Still, considering the idiots that can’t figure out how to navigate a car in a 2-dimensional space, maybe its not bad that they aren’t allowed to try it in a 3-dimensional space.
“MacCartney” ROFLMAO!
Who bothers to listen to the Beatles anymore besides in an elevator or the dentists office? Great music but I’m bored of it. Not that anything new is remotely close in quality. I’m sick of the Beatles and Apple Corps. A bunch of greedy scum bags. Kind of ruins wanting to listen to their music for me. Plus I’m tired of reading about them and their digital music saga. Who cares???
Weren’t the 70’s great? The Beatles and the Flying car!
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http://www.fordpinto.com/mitzar1.htm
Seems like they both crashed, though.
LMBFMA!
Hey Paul,
Just like Apple, you changed the world, pushed the envelope, and set some standards. But Apple is still doing this after 25 or 30 years! You, on the other hand, are just riding your own wave for as long as you can ride it. Lukewarm, stagnant, maybe even lazy comes to mind.
But you can buy your own island, so why should you fret…maybe in another 10 years you can dust yourself off, come out of hiding, and play another Super Bowl. Hopefully, with all that dough, you will still look better than Barry Gibb.
It is not Paul MacCartney talking…it is really William Shears Campbell !!!!!
The reason I say who cares is because every single Beatles track every sold with the exception of “Love” is in my iTunes collection (from the early stuff like the Tony Sheridan Sessions and the Decca Tapes through Sgt. Pepper, the White Album and up to Anthology).
The Beatles started getting my money 20 years ago. Just remember, under U.K. copyright law the Beatles’ songs go public domain over the next 5-13 years.
That’ll make for some fun test cases.
It has a nice ringo to it, by george, but I’m still appauled. Quite johnny-come-lately, oh no?
This is retarded. I rented their cds from the library years ago and ripped the tracks I wanted. By the way I purposely returned them late to pay the fine. Kind of felt like I was paying. Kind’a.
Most people do their greatest work in the second and third decade of life. It is rare to see great work in the fourth and fifth decade of life. Just look at your politicians.
Way to go Steve. You are an exception.
Wow – I see a lot of what binds this board together is hate, or at least antipathy. Isn’t it enough to love Apple? Why waste time hating the Beatles or Dell or Best Buy for that matter. Or slamming the people who do like them?
Microsoft is different. Hate them with unfettered abandon.
MacCartney? – Brilliant!
A good date for the announcement would be June 1, the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s.
Some of you people are real funny. Just because you don’t have an interest in the Beatles doesn’t mean others don’t. I’m sorry you have such lame music “stars” as the latest edition of “American Idol” can churn out.
Money talks. And the fact is the Beatles and Elvis STILL outsell MOST of the so called “stars” of today. I think it was way way back in 2005 that the #1 selling band was some ancient group called the Beatles!!
Yeah, you know all about what’s hot and what’s not.
MCCFR: “If you can think of another band in the mid-Sixties where the producer and engineers were effectively deployed to turn the recording studio into a musical instrument, I’d love to hear your thoughts.”
Such things are subjective, of course. But, depending on how wide you cast your net, I would say . . .
True breakthrough recordings of the sixties — all from the three “B’s”:
– 1966, Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
– 1967, Beatles, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
– 1968, Blood Sweat & Tears, Child Is Father to the Man
It’s not that the Beatles aren’t listened to, worshiped, blah, blah.
It’s that everyone who cares about the Beatles already has their music. They already have it on vynil , cd, and the iPod.