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Just as quickly as the “official” word came through yesterday, it seems that was not quite as “official” as we would have hoped. According to even more recent reports The Beatles tracks will not be heading to iTunes just yet.

“There is no deal for the music of the Beatles to go to iTunes or be sold anywhere on the Internet for downloading,” Roger Friedman reports for FOXNews.com.

So as of now both Apple and the current music rights owners have denied that The Beatles tracks will be appearing on iTunes anytime soon. While we here at Gadgetell are excited about the Beatles hitting iTunes, we will try and limit our next report to when the tracks are actually available for purchase.

Via [MacDailyNews]

After what has amassed to literally years of Beatles and iTunes speculation and rumors ranging from everything to having the music added to a Yellow Submarine branded iPod.

Well, and I say this as a huge Beatles fan, I am glad to say its not the Yellow Submarine iPod that has come true, but instead it’s much more exciting news as the complete Beatles catalog will soon be hitting iTunes. Thanks to a reported $400 million deal, signed by Sir Paul McCartney who seems to be benefiting the most. However Ringo Starr as well as the families of both John Lennon and George Harrison will also benefit. We also cannot forget the record labels, EMI, Sony and Michael Jackson who all own at least partial shares of the collection as well. 

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Earlier today, following Tuesday’s essay by Steve Jobs, it became public that EMI Group (one of the “Big Four” in the music industry) may be interested in freeing its entire library of music from digital-rights management - what’s better known as DRM.  It seems that music executives are speculating EMI will soon make the pluge into DRM-free downloads.  According to the New York Times, executives have stated EMI “has discussed various proposals to sell unprotected files through an array of digital retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Real Networks and Yahoo...”

In the recent past, EMI has piolet-tested selling music without DRM, and apparently it’s worked out for them.

Read [New York Times] Via [Gizmodo]

Ever since the original Napster was shut down, we’ve been waiting for the record industry to open their eyes to change.  They’ve made an attempt with iTunes, but what people really want is free music!  SpiralFrog.com has teamed up with Universal Music Group to offer such a service - with a twist.  According to Marshall over at TechCrunch, in order for your free music to stay active, you need to visit SpiralFrog’s website at least once a month.  If they’re smart and list all of the music on the website - and I presume they will - this will not be too much of an inconvenience at all. 

The company has quite the executive lineup as well.  They’ve got the former CEO of Universal Mccann (advertising firm), a 12 year Microsoft executive, and their board of directors is made up of big-wigs from around the recording industry (even the RIAA).  According to the Financial Times, SpiralFrog is also in talks with Warner, EMI and Sony-BMG for similar deals.

The music service will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media files, that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices...and unfortunately, at this time it doesn’t look like there will be any support for iPods.

Call us skeptics, but we’re not thinking this thing is going to take off.  If you’re going to offer a free service, then get rid of the DRM and make us download straight from the ad supported site.  It may sound bad, but at least it’s another step in the right direction.

Visit SpiralFrog

Read [TechCrunch]

YouTube has been struggling to stay afloat over the past year with their insane bandwidth usage.  They’ve been rumored to pay in the neighborhood of $1,000,000 per day to serve all of the content to their 100 million visitors daily.  Since they’re way beyond standard banner ads being affective, it’s all about striking business relationships.  News.com is reporting that YouTube has been in talks with all of the major record labels including Warner Music Group and EMI.

Regarding the site’s outage yesterday, YT spokeswoman Julie Supan cleared it up by surprisingly saying the following:

“To clarify and ensure accuracy, the site is not down for maintenance,” she said, “This was an unplanned outage.”

Read [News.com]