Here comes the sun, Beatles fans… The band’s legendary music is finally available to download through Apple iTunes as of today!
The years of negotiating and waiting are over. According to The New York Times, in a joint announcement, Apple, EMI, the band’s record label, and Apple Corps, the band’s company, said the Beatles’ 13 remastered studio albums, the two-volume “Past Masters” compilation and the classic “Red” and “Blue” collections are on sale on iTunes as complete albums or individual songs.
“We’re really excited to bring the Beatles’ music to iTunes,” Paul McCartney said in a news release. “It’s fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around.”
As for what you will need to throw down to add The Beatles to your iTunes collection, complete albums are $12.99 and double albums are $19.99. Individual songs are $1.29, and the complete box set costs $149. The “box set” includes a concert film of the Beatles’ first American concert at the Washington Coliseum in 1964.
In anticipation for the digital switchover, Amazon.com reduced the price of the CD box set to $129.99 from $154.99 just this morning.
In a press release Ringo Starr seemed excited for the iTunes release. “I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes. At last, if you want it — you can get it now — The Beatles from Liverpool to now!”
But no one may be more thrilled about the new addition to iTunes than the powerful Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple. According to The New York Times, the longtime Beatles fan said in the press release that he was finally realizing a dream that Apple had when it first introduced iTunes 10 years ago. “We love the Beatles and are honored and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes,” Mr. Jobs said.
It is still unclear what the hold up has been all these years. But we all know that The Beatles will have catastrophic affect on any music distributor as they have sold more than 177 million albums in the US alone. According to The New York Times, Paul McCartney has said that a deal for Beatles’ downloads would have to be approved by all the band members or their heirs.
Although the new access to The Beatles through iTunes is sure to generate a great deal of downloads, Apple executives have said that “iTunes is a ‘break-even’ operation” and that the real money is in selling iPods and iPhones which play the downloaded music, according to The New York Times.
Imagine all the downloads!
If you are a Beatles fan, you already bought the CDs