The Beatles, whose entire back catalogue was reissued in September 2009
Photo: 2009
The Beatles finally joined the digital revolution by making their music available for download through Apple’s iTunes store on Tuesday.
It was the first time that music fans had been able to buy digital versions of their favourite Beatles tracks and immediately it proved popular.
A total of 11 songs were in the top 200 with Hey Jude the highest entry at number 84.
Individual tracks are available from Apple’s iTunes store for 99p per song, and can be copied to an iPhone, iPod, iPad or other MP3 player, and music fans can also buy and download entire albums, complete with sleeve notes, album artwork and even videos featuring the Fab Four.
But most albums cost significantly more to download than they do to buy as physical CDs. The White Album, for instance, will set music fans back £17.99 on iTunes, but only £12.99 from Amazon and £14.29 from Play.com.
Purchasing the entire Beatles back catalogue will cost £125.
The agreement between Apple and The Beatles marks the end of a long courtship, during which Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and a huge Beatles fan, tried to persuade the group to license its music to Apple’s download service.
The Beatles have been notable absentees from the digital music revolution, and it was initially thought that a trademark dispute between Apple Inc, the technology company, and Apple Corps, the Beatles' label, could be to blame, though that legal wrangle was settled in 2007.
Sir Paul McCartney said in 2008 that he “really hoped” a deal would happen, but hinted that negotiations between Apple Corps, Apple Inc and EMI were more complicated than previously thought.
Some had speculated that the remaining members of the group did not want to sell their songs as individual tracks, and instead would only license their music to download sites if they were sold as complete albums.
The news of the deal between Apple and The Beatles got a mixed reaction from music fans. Many people pointed out that they had already “ripped” their Beatles CDs to their computer to transfer on to their music player and mobile phone.
"It has taken so long to get The Beatles on iTunes, and for that reason, it feels like a bigger deal than perhaps it should be," said Stuart Dredge, an online music expert with Music Ally.
"The Fab Four's back catalogue will undoubtedly be popular in digital form, but once the initial sales spike passes, the music industry will be more interested in Apple's plans to evolve iTunes beyond a pure a-la-carte download store."
The Beatles can expect the buying frency to continue.
In September 2009, when the remastered Beatles albums were released they shattered chart records around the world, selling more than 2.25 million copies within days of release in North America, the UK and Japan.
Released as individual albums and box sets on 9 September they brought in s fortune. Figures from record company EMI show UK sales of the digitally remastered albums e exceeded 354,000 in 11 days of release.
Hard figures for the money made by the Beatles from their music are hard to come by. It is estimated that they made £55 million during the group’s lifetime, but since then their reputation has grown ever stronger, and every time an album is remastered or released in a new format, the sales shoot up.
The digital remastering of their catalogue last year, for example, took their total album sales to nearly 9 million, while the repackaging of their number ones in 2000 sold more than seven million in the US alone.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/the-beatles/8138613/Beatles-break-into-top-100-on-iTunes.html