McCartney: Deal for digital Beatles catalog ‘virtually settled’

Apple StorePaul 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.

43 Comments

  1. 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?

  2. 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”.

  3. @ 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.

  4. 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!

  5. 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!

  6. 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.

  7. “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.

  8. 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.

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