Phillip Elmer Dewitt reports for Fortune, “A quick check of the iTunes bestseller list Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours after The Beatles’ albums appeared on the store, found all of them — including the lamentable Magical Mystery Tour — in the top 50.”
iTunes Store Top 50 Albums:
7. Abbey Road
9 The Beatles (White Album)
10. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
12. The Beatles Box Set
16. The Beatles 1967-1970
18. The Beatles 1962-1966
19. Rubber Soul
20. Revolver
21. Magical Mystery Tour
25. Let It Be
27. A Hard Day’s Night
28. Please Please Me
29. Help!
32. With The Beatles
38. Beatles For Sale
49. Yellow Submarine
Full article here.
‘including the lamentable Magical Mystery Tour’
MDN should be half as popular, especially after so many years.
but, but.. I thought that all of The Beatles fans already had all of their albums.. I thought The Beatles didn’t matter anymore…
Yeah, right.. The Beatles will become the top selling artist of 2010 because of this.
This was probably the most talked about topic on facebook yesterday… Apple got a lot of criticism for calling it “a day you’ll never forget.” but I think they may have been right.
Well, it’s Elmer-Dewitt saying that, not MDN.
And you have to admit the Magical Mystery Tour album has all those clunkers like “I Am The Walrus” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
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You can buy any of these albums for a couple if bucks ina CD swap shop and rip them lossless- way better quality for less $.
Besides, Sir Paul, Ringo and Yokohama are set for life.
“Lamentable Magical Mystery Tour” Is Elmer-Dewitt insane? It was the movie that was a stoners home project. The album with Magical Mystery Tour, The Fool on the HIll, Your Mother Should Know, I Am The Walrus, Hello Goodbye, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Baby You’re a Rich Man, All You Need is Love is an outstanding Album. I have been listening to nothing but my new Beatle albums since yesterday morning.
MikeK’s got it right… so much for MDNs constant bleat about this, generally along the lines of this “take” from almost two years ago:
“At this point, whatever Beatles tracks that most people want have long been digitized and are already on their iPods. The only ones missing out are new fans who don’t know what BitTorrent is – in other words, not a huge audience.”
Er, no.
Dont buy the songs. Wait for next year when the song’s copyrights expire and pick them up for free.
Right… and what’s number one? Rihanna.
2: Glee
3: Rascall Flatts
4: Keith Urban.
The contemporary artists are still selling more. If it was such a big fucking deal the Beatles would occupy all 10 spots… nobody fucking cares but a bunch of aging hippies who need to put the pot down.
Um bob, they don’t need to be number…
The Beatles have already sold 1.% BILLION albums.
They sold 3.3 Million albums last year alone.
They were the #2 top selling artist of the decade next to eminem.
Their catalog was released digitally yesterday and they now have 15 albums in the top #50..
Lets see where Rhianna, Glee, Rascall, and Keith Urban are in 40 years.
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Oh the Internet where every dog is king and so impotent in opinion…
If anyone else other than Apple would have gotten exclusive digital disribution rights for the Beatles, it would be big news and a coup…
This is regarles of anyones personal tase and opinion a big deal.
I see Microsoft Bob is still bitter.
My 18 yr old daughter just asked for the box set for Christmas ,many of her college roomates are asking for it as well.Who knew? I never liked them back in the sixties but have come to appreciate them over the years.as I am 52 and have none of their music ,it’s the box set for me as well .
@Bob
Wow, tell us how you really feel, whydoncha?
Corrections to my above post :
“They don’t need to be number one”
-and-
1.5 BILLION albums
@Bob
Contemporary artists in battle with act that disbanded 40 years ago! Contemporary artists come out on top! YAY!! “Nobody” cares – that’s why the 40-year-old group has more albums in the Top 50 than Rihanna, Glee, Rascall Flatts and Keith Urban combined. You could say, “The Beatles are experiencing Nirvana!!” HA HA HA HA HA!!!
I was lighting designer on a Las Vegas John Lennon show called JUST IMAGINE with Tim Piper (the best looking and sounding Lennon in the business) and of all the musical selections they played hearing I AM THE WALRUS played live is utterly amazing! As is most of the Beatles canon.
Beatles and John Lennon music played live is incredibly musically infectious. not much today can compare to it. You won’t be humming Kanye West, et al, tunes 40 years from here, they’ll be a tough rivia question. This is eternal music and while not classical music, it is classic music in that in it’s own category it IS on a par with the classical composers
I wish I cared.
I do get The Beatles and a lot of their work was genre-defining.
But, at the end of the day, this is a band who split up 40 years ago and with only 50% of its famous line up still alive and kicking.
On top of that, the iTunes Store kicked off over seven years ago: if Apple Corps would have put The Beatles into the digital age back in 2005, this might have been an exciting development – but they’ve waited until the marketplace is mature and they’ve allowed others to be pioneers which wasn’t the case when they were making music as opposed to money.
Now they’re just a late arrival.
@MCCFR
“Now they’re just a late arrival”
Which is exactly why it’s become such a big deal.. They are the biggest band in history and it was a ten year battle for Apple vs. Apple to agree to terms.
As evidenced by the poll on this page, MDN and the tech-geek crowd to measure as indicators of what is musically important.. But by most other measurments The Beatles were and continue to be the most important and influential band the world has known.
Steve Jobs gets it, and that’s all that really matters since he’s the one running the company.
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above sentence should read:
“As evidenced by the poll on this page, MDN and the tech-geek crowd are not good indicators to go by when trying to measure what is musically important..”
Comment from: ron
‘including the lamentable Magical Mystery Tour’
MDN should be half as popular, especially after so many years.
Uuuh Ron… that was a Phillip Elmer Dewittless comment not MDN’s.
You are not great with context, eh?
MDN…did you iCal what you said yesterday about this….the’yeah right what importance is this?’ part? Very important for apple indeed it is….
from Peter Blood:
“Beatles and John Lennon music played live is incredibly musically infectious. not much today can compare to it. You won’t be humming Kanye West, et al, tunes 40 years from here, they’ll be a tough rivia question. This is eternal music and while not classical music, it is classic music in that in it’s own category it IS on a par with the classical composers”
I agree 100%.
Whether the naysayers here like it or not, Beatles music will still be listened to, and the Beatles will still be well-known, a hundred years from now.
Think about it – this band put out their first album in 1963, and 47 years later that same album is one of the top 50 sellers on the most popular music service in the world.
@ Luc
Agreed. Obviously The Beatles are not going to make or break Apple’s bottom line as a company, but having The Beatles is definitely high profile advertising for Apple and they will likely become one of the top selling iTunes artists.
That’s very important for mind-share.
To all the ‘tards saying “All the Beatles fans already own all their records”, I’d like to pass on a little known secret- We make new people every day!
I know, I know- Everything in your tiny little world is about you and you alone, but my 12 year old cousin just discovered the Beatles, and he’s buying their material from iTunes.
@Makes no sense
If you mean the crappy CDs that came out twenty years ago, go ahead and rip them. Only, you won’t get quality even “lossless”. Lossless crap is still crap. The digital tracks were painstakingly re-mixed and remastered by George Best himself and his son. It’s an awesome sound, considering some of the tracks are almost half a century old.
Lamentable “Magigical Mystery Tour” indeed.
First off it was #21. Second is MDN in that lamentable camp that feel the Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request” is lamentable too?
@hagar57: Um, no, it’s not “George Best”, it’s “George Martin” and his son. You’re thinking of Pete Best.
What I don’t get is, what did Apple Corps Ltd. get by waiting this long? No single song purchases? Didn’t get that. A higher price? Didn’t get that either. Copy protection? Nope!
I don’t get it.
. . . or, was Apple Corps Ltd. just using iTunes as bate in their dealings with EMI?
@shmerls: MDN didn’t say that MMT was lamentable; Phillip Elmer Dewitt wrote that in Fortune. Reading is a good thing.
Satanic Majesties is not exactly lamentable; it’s just an artifact from the psychedelic era’s least psychedelic band.
Predictably, Yellow Submarine brings up the rear.
“What I don’t get is, what did Apple Corps Ltd. get by waiting this long? “
A lot of hype, a day we’ll never forget and 15 albums in the top 50!
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seriously though, the terms haven’t been disclosed…
Awesome! I can’t wait to see the sales numbers for the first day or two.
I will never forget! 11/16/10
The most important day in the history of everything!
I love the Beatles, but I don’t know whether to be amazed or saddened that they are consistently a top-selling artist this long after their breakup.
One way to look at it is that popular music has really hit a dead-end. Surely the “next Beatles” should have come along by now.
——RM
still second to ABBA
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I am SICK of how “performers” have discovered Antares Auto-Tune and abuse it. When really good vocalists like Cher used it years ago to artistic effect it was an interesting one-off (or so we hoped) but now it’s a total crutch and BORING and annoying as hell. Kinda like how robotic vocoder vocal effects quickly wore out their welcome.
C’mon people this technology has been around more than 10 years and vacuous music producers gotta have that “me-too” over-processed sound of instead of creating their own or, God forbid, use singers who can actually sing! Paraphrasing Steve Martin from PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES “Heres a clue, create something musically new and original with real singing talent, it makes it so much more entertaining for the listener!”
I “auto-tune out” instantly as soon as I hear that identifiable aural abomination.
The silence from MSN must be from their foot being full in their mouth( or a**). Where is their know-it-all-we are-never-wrong take now?
Hello….hello? Anyone home at MDN?….. Winnies!
Check it out in a couple of weeks…
Tried to criticize MDN for there silence and it would not allow it
Will try again….
The silence from MDN must be from their foot in their mouth or a**. Where is your know-it all-we are-always-right take now?
Hello…hello? Anyone home at MDN? Weenies!
@Peter Blood
Get used to it. Auto tune and Melodyne are used in every commercial recording. Even the non-effect vocals (the ones that don’t use the Cher or T Pain sound) use it. Sometimes it is barely noticeable.
It is very difficult to sing in tune. Auto tune is very easy. It will never go away, anymore than spell checker will disappear.
“Check it out in a couple of weeks…”
—————————-
Yeah, let’s see if these flash in the pan mop-heads known as “The Beatles” are still selling albums in a few weeks..
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I’m with you bob, the beatles were too radical for their time and way too boring for this time. if you want to listen to classic music there’s the doors, led zeppelin, queen.. much better alternatives. apples/steves infatuation with the beatles only separates it from the new generation, even my pot smoking friends find them way too boring.
I ordered the boxed set from Amazon. Yesterday.
@Manbearpig
“Auto tune and Melodyne are used in every commercial recording.”
Make that “nearly every commercial POP recording”.
Real, trained, singers like Renée Fleming, Bryn Terfel and Anna Netrebko don’t use electronic tone correction. They’d be booed off the stage if they did. Guaranteed.
@ Makes No Sense:
“You can buy any of these albums for a couple if bucks ina CD swap shop and rip them lossless- way better quality for less $.”
What’s your point? Same applies to any currently recorded material.
Maybe what you meant was:
“You can buy any album for a couple if bucks ina CD swap shop and rip them lossless- way better quality for less $.
This is the big announcement? And that’s it???
Please please please….Apple hello! Do not sink in to da pathetic marketing category…
@Mr Reeee
Fine. Every single popular Pop commercial recording since 2004 uses some sort of pitch correction.
Opera singers sing without mics in performance, so clearly they can’t use software to correct pitch.
@ manbearpig
“Opera singers sing without mics in performance, so clearly they can’t use software to correct pitch.”
There are live performance boxes that can do pitch correction on the fly. I believe there is a certain amount of latency though.
I don’t object as much to this audio pitch correction technique when used moderately and not in your face. It’s the blatant yodeling abuse of it (set to “11”) that drives me up a wall and switch songs faster ‘n grease lightnin’! Frankly flaws in playing, singing and performing can be charming and add the human factor. Perfection need not always apply.
I remember buying drum machines back in the 80’s & 90’s that would actually have that slightly imperfect human beat factor built in.
@LordRobin,
I’ll respectfully modify your comment [in brackets] to put this in context:
“I love [Mozart], but I don’t know whether to be amazed or saddened that [he is] consistently a [renowned] artist this long after [his passing]. One way to look at it is that [classical] music has really hit a dead-end. Surely the “next [Mozart]” should have come along by now.”
Beatles = “next Mozart” perhaps? Or Debussy or Gershwin? Every generation offers its timeless artists; some stick while others pass into history.