Tuesday, November 16, 2010

All You Need Is *Yawn*

The Beatles are finally coming to iTunes! Who cares!

In one of their trademark "big deal" announcements, Apple said they would finally start selling music from the biggest band in history. The Beatles had been the most prominent holdout from iTunes (and other online music services), and the legal bad blood between the two giants didn't help. Apple Corps, the Beatles management company had previously battled the computer company in a trademark dispute, which was resolved in 2007 and makes their announcement three years past relevant.  But hey, that money for doing a Rock Band version wasn't going to last forever...

Apple will sell 13 remastered Beatles studio albums, the two-volume "Past Masters" set and the classic "Red" and "Blue" collections. People Suckers can buy individual songs for $1.29 apiece or download entire albums, at $12.99 for a single album and $19.99 for a double (those Red / Blue collections, The White Album, etc..).  For $149, they're also shilling a "special digital box set" that includes a download of the 41-minute movie of the Beatles first U.S. concert, Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964.

I'm just going to point out the far lower pricing that you can find on Amazon in case you didn't want to pay more for those same albums.  That is, if you didn't already own them on disc, and haven't already ripped it to upload it into your iTunes already.  Because that would take the less time than buying it for download on iTunes.  Maybe it's good news to the six people who use iTunes but are inexplicably not tech-savvy enough to rip a disc or download the albums elsewhere, but what's the big deal for anyone else?

And in somewhat unrelated news, a dedication of "When I'm Sixty-Four" to Famous Dad on his birthday...

1 comment:

Keir said...

I'm a huge Beatles fan. Therefore I completely agree with you. The biggest single they sold last week- Here Comes the Sun? Who DOESN'T have that song already, or any of the other versions and bootlegs?