Many industry watchers thought that agreement might clear the way for Beatles songs to be offered on iTunes and other online music stores.
Many Beatles fans saw a glimmer of hope in February when the two Apple companies settled their nearly three-decades-long dispute over the Apple trademark.
"We don't have anything to announce at this time." "We don't comment on rumors and speculation in general, but as we've said in the past we'd love to have the Beatles catalog on iTunes," said Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple and iTunes. which makes computers and iPods and sells songs through iTunes - and Apple Corp., which along with the EMI Group, controls the rights to all of the Beatles recordings.ĮMI owns the recordings, but any decision to publish - in any format - must also be agreed upon by Apple Corp., the British company owned by the surviving Beatles and the other band members' heirs.īoth Apple companies declined to talk about a deal allowing the Beatles on iTunes. There has long been friction between Apple Inc. "There's no question that there is a massive demand for the Beatles through a digital channel," Sinnreich said, "not only from baby boomers, who would replace the CDs they used to replace their LPs, but also from today's college students, who demonstrate continued interest in the band despite the fact that it's their grandparents' music." In that time-period - long after the band broke up - the Beatles were the second-best selling artists in the country, after Garth Brooks. In the last 16 years alone, the Beatles have sold 54.9 million albums in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which has tracked record sales since 1991. Once they are, I think it confers the sense that digital music has finally arrived in the mainstream."Ī Beatles deal would mean millions of dollars, with the group having sold 170 million albums in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.Īnd don't think that it's just baby boomers who bought LPs decades ago.ĬLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS OF BEATLES ALBUMS "They have not been available legally from any digital music service to date. "The Beatles are really the holy grail for digital music, said Aram Sinnreich, a professor at New York University's department of media culture and communications and managing partner of Radar Research LLC, a media consulting firm. Today's announcement didn't included the Beatles - although John Lennon once appeared on screen - but such a deal is probably not too far off, say those who follow such things. With Apple again making a big product announcement today, many industry watchers are once again waiting - some would say eagerly - for an iTunes-Beatles deal. But that could change soon.Rumors have long surrounded some type of deal between the Beatles and an online retailer such as iTunes. The best-selling band of all time is noticeably absent from the digital realm.
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