“The initial Beatles sales figures are in: More than 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs were sold on iTunes worldwide, according to Apple, since the Beatles catalog was made available Tuesday (Nov. 16). In U.S. the best-selling album was ‘Abbey Road’ and best-selling song was ‘Here Comes the Sun,'” Billboard reports.
“Of that tally, U.S. album sales totaled 119,000 units, which included 13,000 digital box sets, while individual digital track sales reached 1.4 million, according to industry sources,” Billboard reports. “Sources say the U.S. album sales tally of 119,000 counts each box set as one unit, while Apple’s worldwide album sales tally counts each box set as multiple sales units, although it wasn’t immediately clear how many units each box set accounted for.”
“The Fab Four’s debut-week sales on iTunes compare favorably with the first-week sales of previous iTunes holdouts,” Billboard reports. “When Led Zeppelin’s catalog made its digital debut in November 2007, the band generated total U.S. digital album sales of 47,000 units… Led Zeppelin’s first-week individual track sales totaled 300,000, according to SoundScan.”
Billboard reports, “Sources say the Beatles/iTunes media campaign is expected to kick into high gear this for Black Friday, with expanded TV advertising in the U.S. and full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Beatles For Sale.
I’ll be the first to admit that the early Beatles recordings, while some were stellar, were uneven at best, and their solo recordings, including Lennon’s, were inconsistent despite some gems.
However, if anyone can provide me evidence of a band achieving a consistent level of supremacy the Beatles displayed from 1965 to 1970 over these 8 albums, I sure would like to hear about them:
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Magical Mystery Tour
White Album
Abbey Road
Let It Be
Those who for some bizarre reason feel the need to showcase their deep disdain for the Beatles will no doubt say that 2 million songs, PLUS 450k albums (approximate equivalent of about 6 million songs) is a low number and somehow proves that the Beatles are worthless or something.
If you take off those green-tinted glasses, you’ll realise that 2 million songs and 450k albums in one single week confirms that the music of the Beatles is apparently still very attractive to new mainstream audiences.
We can discuss the fact how Paul and Ringo will continue to line their coffers with our cash, but the fact will remain that the general iTunes buying public will continue to buy Beatles. I would not be surprised if the Beatles ended up being the best selling act of 2010. They are already very close, and that was BEFORE they landed on the biggest music store in the world.
“That’s it? After all that hype? They sold a mangy 2 million tracks?
Jay-Z sells more than that whenever a new album debuts.” —R2
That’s because there are more morons in this world than there are people who know the difference between good music and noise.
Don’t know how love turned to loathe..
The Beatles could have made a lot more money if they released on iTunes early on. Too bad.
@clinical…..
YOU have it right.
@ solid
You’re on the money there. All those amazing albums over the course of 5 years is the most impressive feat in the history of pop music IMHO. Other great bands and solo artists dream of 2 or 3 masterpieces over their entire careers but the Beatles put out 8 in just 5 short years. These days, a major artist or band releases an album every 2~3 years or longer.
Some of you are forgetting that Apple didn’t do any external advertising. This number is huge for any band, but not game changing in of itself for Apple. However that’s only because the only purchasers to date are those iTunes or Apple.com users who happened across it this week or were tuned into the news of it. There may be many potential new customers to Apple once they start external advertising.
Additionally many people will get hooked when they hear song samples in ads and such.
–sent from my iPhone as I cross the Gibraltar Straight headed for Morocco!
Whoopty doo. 450,000 albums. Not of one album, but of how many iTunes sells of The Beatles?
2 million single songs. Again, from how many albums?
Not a big deal. Sorry.
I think that’s pretty cool, that of all the power John and Paul held in songwriting, George’s song sold more. Bravo George! My favorite Beatle.
Comment from: solid
However, if anyone can provide me evidence of a band achieving a consistent level of supremacy the Beatles displayed from 1965 to 1970 over these 8 albums, I sure would like to hear about them:
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Magical Mystery Tour
White Album
Abbey Road
Let It Be
*********
Led Zeppelin I
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin IV
Houses of the Holy
Physical Graffiti
Presence
In Through the Out Door
Dude:
Your personal music taste is NOT universal criteria for music quality. There is no doubt that the band Led Zeppelin has its place in the evolution of contemporary popular music. The main diference is, the musical quality alone of the Lennon-McCartney oeuvre very clearly lifts it out of the narrow contemporary popular music genre and places it shoulder to shoulder with other creative talent in the history of music, from Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso, through Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, all the way to Ligetti, Nielssen, Carter and others.
It has been agreed by most musicologists that, other than Lennon-McCartney duo, popular music of 20th (or 21st) centuries hasn’t really produced creative talent that can measure up to the giants of musical history.
Any further debate is pretty much all based on personal tastes. We all know the futility of debating personal tastes in music (or anything else, for that matter).
I was never a fan of Beatles (or indeed any popular music); being a fan of classical, I always wished Lennon and McCartney had some formal compositional training (perhaps Royal College of Music). I can’t imagine how many incredibly creative works for real orchestras they would have been able to create…
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