“Music by the Beatles, notably absent from the digital revolution, will be made available for downloading by fans of the Fab Four. The entire Beatles catalog is being remastered and the recordings will be made available for downloading, according to a witness statement in a London court by Neil Aspinall, managing director of Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles’ company. The statement, made during a suit by Apple Corps against Apple Computer Inc., was confirmed today by Moira Bellas, a spokeswoman for Apple Corps. ‘There are plans to do it,’ she said of offering Beatles songs for downloading. ‘There’s no firm date yet’ and no deals have yet been signed with downloading services, she said,” Bloomberg reports.
“‘We’re remastering the whole Beatles catalog, just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages,’ Aspinall said in the lawsuit witness statement, according to World Entertainment News Network, and confirmed by Bellas, the Apple Corps spokeswoman. ‘I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters,’ Aspinall said. ‘It would be better to wait and try to do them simultaneously so that you then get the publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc.’ Apple Corps, which represents the Beatles’ business interests, is owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison. Court hearings in Apple Corps’ lawsuit against Apple Computer concluded April 5, with the judge saying he will issue a decision at a later date,” Bloomberg reports.
Full article here.
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but it wont be on itunes
Won’t be seeing them on iTunes.
Maybe Napster and Yahoo.
Happy sales.
… but not at iTunes.
Jobs can pull it off, no probs
Rockin! 1st post!
If it’s not iTunes, they’re really dumb.
Do you people think they REALLY have plans to make this stuff available?
I think they are just trying to make Apple Corps sound really similar to Apple Computer in that they both offer digital downloading.
If it’s not on iTunes people will turn to P2P sites to download free rather than pay higher prices for non-iPod compatible music.
A lot of assumption here. Perhaps Apple struck a deal with Apple Corp. to make Beatles songs available on iTMS with Apple taking no money from the sale provided Apple Corp. doesn’t take any further action against them. Any number of possible deals may have been struck.
It won’t be long yeah! (yeah, yeah, yeah)
If they are on iTunes, I’ll buy them. Otherwise – life goes on.
i thought that Michael Jackson is the owner of the Beetles Catalog !
Fuck it. I’ll just DL Beatles songs via P2P like I always have in the past.
MJ is selling the Beetles to Sony:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/business/media/13music.html?ex=1302580800&en=45bff2f7a4da68fe&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
nobody cares.
If you like The Beatles you own the CDs. If you own the CDs you can put them in iTunes.
Why the big fuss? Unless they unveil some great new songs that have been in a vault for decades, why would anyone buy their music?
I own a bunch of Beatles albums on vinyl and CD. The big question is if the sound quality of the remastered albums and booklets offer enough incentive for me to buy the White Album all over again.
Soured on the whole Beatles thing. Grew up with them, but after their record label tries to extort money from a company which is innovating and even offering the most lucrative channel for them in the past 40 years my sentiments to Yoko, et. al is this … FUCKEM!
I think ron is right on. This is just bs posturing to make it look like Apple Corps(e) is into digital downloading, to create the illusion that somehow Apple is costing them money.
Screw these guys. From here on out, I’m stealing all my Beatles music.
You hear that Sir Paul?
like the Beetles need the money. Who cares?
I get it now, Apple Corp sued Apple Computer because they wanted to tape into the download music market but couldn’t due to it’s 91 agreement. Apple Corp was given the trademark right to destribute physical media, and genereate music content using the Apple Logo and Apple Computer was given the right for “pretty much” everything else, including digital distrabition. Now Apple Corp want’s to distribute its master through a download service but that realm falls under Apple’s control. That’s what this is about. As I see it Apple Corp screwed themselves. To bad.
I find it somewhat ironic that we are bashing the non-iTunes music providers and a VCast ad is iat the bottom of this page.
Apple Corpse wants to leech off Apple Computer’s brand awareness in the music downloads business. Seems to me it should be Apple Computer suing the Apple Corpse!
MW: “chance,” as in Fat Chance.
“i thought that Michael Jackson is the owner of the Beetles Catalog !”
Michael is a friggin’ assclown. Who by the way has been hiding out since his trial.
Michael Jackson never owned the recordings of the Beatles’ songs. He owned the publisher’s rights, or the sheet music. When he and Sony merged their record labels Sony got 50% of those rights. Now that MJ is nearly bankrupt he may need to sell his stake to Sony, which will make his financial situation even worse. Every time anyone plays any version of a Beatles song, even covers by other artists or elevator music or bits used in comercials, he gets money (as does Sony) but unlike Sony MJ doesn’t have much other income coming in, not since his own career died. Losing that money stream might ruin him.
The orignal recordings are all owned by Capitol/EMI, with whom Apple Corps must be working to remaster them as Apple Corps doesn’t own any of the recordings. In fact Apple corps doesn’t own much of anything. Some vanity projects the beatle’s did after 1968 when it was founded, but all their significant work was done before then and they didn’t put their own art in it. They signed some other deals and tried to make movies and some other entertainment related things but nothing really took off.
Jay,
Thanks for explaining …