Beatles catalog coming to a music download service near you

Posted April 17, 2006 at 08:04 PM by Adam Berger

Section: Online Music/Video

I believe the folks over at Gear Log said it best:

Do you want to know a secret? It’s been a long and winding road, but something happened yesterday. From me to you, let’s hope that this is not a rumor: The Beatles have confirmed to release their music through digital music services. Don’t let me down, Paul. This is serious stuff. It’s bad enough that Michael Jackson owns the rights to your songs (but according to this Forbes article, Jackson may be forced to sell half of his stake in his music-publishing catalog, which includes 251 Beatles songs).

Speaking during the Apple Corps versus Apple Computer trial in the UK High Court last week, Apple Corps label boss Neil Aspinall confirmed the plans to release songs on an online music download service. Aspinall said that Apple Corps is remastering the Beatles catalogue to make it sound better and that it is assembling digital booklets to accompany the downloads.

Offering this collection exclusively on a single online music service will either offer a huge boost (to struggling services such as Sony Connect or Napster) or secure iTunes as the dominant player. If your wondering Sir Paul McCartney gave video iPods away to everyone who accompanied him on his US tour last year.

Read [Gear Log]