The Beatles on iTunes: No News is Bad News
By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 12:10 am
When will the Beatles finally be available on iTunes, or anywhere else you can legally download music or stream it on demand? I’m beginning to think it’ll be when I’m 64–which gives the multiple parties involved in this saga until 2028 to get their respective acts together. Or at least this MG Siegler story at TechCrunch, covering recent comments by Sir Paul and EMI, provides no particular reason to expect any good news any time soon.
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May 18th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Why is this a story? Anyone who cares about The Beatles already owns their albums and their CDs, and they don’t care about digital downloads, because they don’t own MP3 players. For the people under 40 (who, by and large, don’t care about The Beatles at all), they can pretty easily just grab the whole Beatles discography from Bittorrent, if they want it, which they don’t. They don’t even feel guilty about it; it’s not like Paul and Yoko are hard-up for cash.
Also, who would pay $1/song for Beatles music anyway? You know you can get the entire 30-song White Album from Amazon, in physical form, for $7, right? Rubber Soul has 15 tracks, and that’s $2. Go to town!
Or don’t, because The Beatles sound like crap in headphones.
May 18th, 2010 at 4:24 am
Yeah, who cares anymore. Buy the CDs and rip them. The same with AC/DC. Everyone who wants the music in mp3 form probably already has it.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Both of the above arguments can be used to argue against iTunes in general – just substitute the Beatles or AC/DC for any artist. And it misses the point. I and several others do not own all of the Beatles CD’s despite being a fan (I’m gonna want a cite that none of the Beatles owns a MP3 player because that doesn’t explain why all of the Beatles’s solo stuff is readily able on iTunes).
Sure I could buy a CD, but not everyone wants to buy the whole album to get a song that they like. I don’t want to have to spend 20 bucks to get “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” found only on the White Album, have to wait several days to get it shipped (since there is no guarantee that I can find it in stores), spend 20 bucks and get a CD that has a bunch of other tracks that I don’t want and be stuck with a physical CD that is just going to collect dust.
If it were on iTunes, I could have downloaded this song before finishing this comment and be done with it and I could have done it any time. This comment applies equally to the Beatles, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and lots of other Artists whom I like selected songs but I don’t want to waste my money on tracks I don’t care to listen to.
I have no doubt that the Harrison and Lennon estate along with McCartney and Starkey are against the iTunes Store or against splitting their tracks up – As I pointed out before, all of their solo work is on iTunes – these guys are smart enough to know that a sale is a sale.
Anyone who just blatantly states “Just buy the CD’s! After all anyone who want’s it digitally already has them” cannot be telling the truth. Digital music sales numbers indicates that people don’t want to “just buy the CD’s” It’s that kind of dismissive attitude that prevents progress and maintains the status quo.
May 18th, 2010 at 10:05 am
If the status quo is that, right now, you can buy the White Album on Amazon for $7, versus $30 on a track-by-track basis, or $20 at the album-rate (it is a double), in a format that you can never resell, which in turn jeopardizes the ability for future generations to buy used, classic albums for cheap, then I’m cool with maintaining the status quo.
I actually want iTunes and other online music stores to fail. Somehow, in the transition from CDs to downloads, music has gone up in price, while the share that goes to the artists has actually gone down. It’s just bad for everyone, including consumers, who are paying for more for something, yet getting less than they used to, and having the right to resell it taken away.
August 22nd, 2010 at 10:20 am
I have been a Beatles fan since I was 15 years old. I am now 60 years old. I would consider myself a very loyal Beatles fan of over 45 years I own evry Beatles album evr released it mint condition form. But I really thinl Yoko is begrudging the younger generation of Beatles fans this luxury.
January 10th, 2011 at 1:10 am
Random question: I am starting my blog to share our experiences. Do you find it hard or easy to post consistently?