Steve Jobs no longer Eggman as Beatles hits iTunes It's official: Apple has finally added the Beatles' back catalogue to its iTunes music service. Cupertino said that from today the band's 13 studio albums including Please Please Me, White Album and Rubber Soul are now available via iTunes. Additionally, Apple fans can also buy the Beatles' two-volume Past Masters and Red and …
That is called called "marketing". Any "hype" that existed was generated by the idiotic bloggers, social networkers and media outlets (Reg excluded, obviously!) that have nothing better to do. What is even sadder is that they fall for it every time and Apple know this! So, understandably, they take advantage of this free advertising. This is why Apple don't have to spend what Microsoft do on a new mobile OS/device release...
I am completely undewhelmed by this.
The beatles have been available via iTunes since it had the ability to rip CDs. Making the music available to purchase online is a massively minor victory for Jobs, and may infact show how weak he actually is in the music business. I don't doubt he had to make very painful sacrifices for this.
FWIW, I have had all the beatles albums on my ipod for yonks, no thanks to a baldy cupertinian or a oriental photographer on a power trip!
Well, the thing is that the large majority of Pink Floyd albums are designed to be heard in their entirety, like a stage musical or an opera. Granted, the radio stations always only play one or two tracks off of albums like "Dark Side" or "The Wall", but that's like only hearing one song from one scene of "I Pagliacci".
How many Beatles fans do you think will actually be buying it on iTunes? If they're fans, they'll have it already and will gain nothing from buying an iTunes copy of an album they already own. LP, CD, and the various enhanced or remastered versions - if they think they're getting better value, then fine.
Though it's funny, I've discovered a new kind of getting old. I saw the adverts for the remastered Red & Blue Albums and thought to myself "ooh, I remember when it was first remastered"...
Annihiliator sez:
"Though it's funny, I've discovered a new kind of getting old. I saw the adverts for the remastered Red & Blue Albums and thought to myself 'ooh, I remember when it was first remastered'..."
My first "replacement" Beatle album purchase was around 1981, when I replaced my old LP of "Abbey Road", battered by four years on a dorm stereo, with a copy of the Mobile Fidelity Labs' famous half-speed remastered reissue LP on virgin vinyl.
Looking back we shall see this as historic as that famous day when the Wiliams, Caxton and Shakespeare, shook hands over the printing of the first "Collected Works of ..."
While my grasp of history maybe shaky I still think its pretty cool
Mine's the one with the White and Green Apple lapels ....
A future royal wedding, a photographer off the public service payroll, The Beatles on iTunes. I know the phrase usually implies that there's some big news to mask the other stuff, but today I think the whole edifice is self burying — if there was one thing happening that it was difficult to care about rather than three then I'd probably at least try to consider it objectively. As it is, I think I'll just stick with the usual thoughts about things that are actually relevant to me.
I've been waiting for this for so long. At last, Apple have proven their worthiness as an organization by bringing the Beatles to itunes. I had always felt that my music collection was lacking, but now that the Beatles are available to me, I can immediately go out and purchase these songs. I am sure I will enjoy songs by the Beatles, never mind that I tried listening to some a few years ago and moved away from it soon after. The audio quality must be so much better because it's on itunes. I can't wait to listen to it on my ipad while I tweet about it from my iphone.
I wish I had a womb so that Steve Jobs could impregnate me with the next visionary.
That's all nice and such, but what about the big announcement Apple said they were going to make today?
As I'm under 50 the Beatles means Mull of Kintyre, Linda McCartney Sausage Rolls, Imagine, hare krishna, The Frog Chorus, Give my Regards to Broad Street, Ebony and Ivory, and Thomas the Tank Engine...
Of which Thomas the Tank Engine has the most credibility.
dct sez:
"As I'm under 50 the Beatles means Mull of Kintyre, Linda McCartney Sausage Rolls, Imagine, hare krishna, The Frog Chorus, Give my Regards to Broad Street, Ebony and Ivory, and Thomas the Tank Engine..."
D'ahh, you're just pissed off because you missed out on all the good stuff... although you _do_ list "Imagine" in there. I always thought John's solo stuff totally frickin' ruled. I mean, "Imagine" vs. "Wings At The Speed Of Sound"? Jeezus, man; Paul really _was_ dead.
an Anonymous Coward sez:
"I suspect the Beatles shall remain a cash cow for many years to come..."
Damn' straight, man. That's because they were _awesome_, the same reason all those people -- and not just old people -- still dig Sinatra and Hank Williams.
Honestly...does anybody here think that in twenty years, you'll hear anyone at all utter the sentence, "I suspect that Taylor Swift shall remain a cash cow for many years to come..."?
CDs are not loss-less. As a digital sample, they lost everything between the sample bits. Admitted, that's not a loss that really matters, but it does put some perspective on things.
- I bought my Beatles collection on vinyl, and didn't understand why most wanted to spend $20-$30 (at the time) on a CD, rather than the pure analog audio of vinyl.
I still have the records, and no CDs; but I also have more Beatles on MP3 than iTunes.
While vinyl may be analogue, an in theory "better" than digital ie. CD's. In most cases they are decidedly inferior as actually playing them is a physical process that damages the surface, which is then picked up, along with any dust, in all it's analogue glory as a hiss in the background.
If there is any significant detail lost in sampling from one 44,000th of a second to the next, you'd be unlikely to notice it anyway.
Most of the differences you notice are probably more to do with the recording technology and digital processing than the method used to actually get it to you.
I was around when the Beatles did the CBS Ed Sullivan Show way back in February 1964 where they were paid standard rates but had first and last slots on three consecutive Sunday shows.
Parents didn't know what to do: first there had been legless Elvis Presley whose legs, and more particularly, his hips were kept out of frame because of the alleged sexual implications from their movements.
Now uptight, short back and sides, Americans were faced with these four hairy foreigners who practically put a large debt in the haircutting business as American youth emulated their new musical heroes.
With today's technology, copies will be on-line Torrents tomorrow.
My youngest sister had just been conceived when the Beatles played their first Ed Sullivan gig, and she ended up being even a bigger fan than I am (age seven when they first played the Sullivan show).
About six or seven years ago, I went into a record shop looking to finally replace my old LP copy of Pink Floyd's "Meddle". Miracle of miracles, I found it -- and in the "Special" bin, at that. So, I take the CD to the counter to pay for it, and there's this college kid running the register with sloppy grunge hair, ripped baggy grunge pants and a beat-up Soundgarden t-shirt, post-punk all the way. I brace for sneering contempt as I slide my CD reissue of a pre-Dark Side Floyd album across the counter. The kid takes it to ring it up, and his eyes light up. "Wow! 'Meddle'! What an awesome album! I really love old Floyd, man..."
...and I thought, "jeez, maybe there's still hope..."
Whilst the media likes to give the impression that the height of musical taste and talent is on offer with X-Factor, the availability of good music has never been greater.
I brought my first Beatles single (Help! if you must know) when I was six, lived through the pirate radio's and the setting up of Radio One, and remember the 70's and everyone going quiet in the school playground on a Tuesday afternoon when the Top Ten was read out over against-the-rules trannies (radios).
I've got three teenage kids now, and without trying to influence them in any way they have all developed very wide tastes in music. I often listen to the music they play, and their choice of modern bands shows that musical talent is alive and well and kicking ass. Bugger the Lady Ga-Ga, Katie Perry and Take That karaoke shows, bands like Muse, The Killers and Kings of Leon are the equal of anyone for the last 50 years, possibly with the exception of Queen and the Stones.
My youngest son is really into early Bowie, which I sang with my schoolfriends on the bus. My daughter plays drums and loves Pink Floyd and Green Day. Eldest son play guitar, loves The Who and Muse in that order.
Plenty of good music around, just don't assume the youth of today is musically illiterate because of what you read.
Beatles on iTunes = Meh!
on-line Torrents *TOMORROW*? Methinks you have been sleeping. Also, most of them are available as ISOs or lossless FLAC rather than pissy mp3.
Sorry, but ten quidlets for a 45 year old album encoded with the lossiest codec known to man seems like less than a bargain.
<cue series of "I love my MP#! You want lossy, try codec X" posts>
Beatles? Weren't they a popular beat combo around the time of Queen Victoria or something?
£10.99 for an old album? You're having a right merry chuckle aren't you Lord Jobs?
And the box set at £125 or $149? Hang on, what exchange rate is that based on? Oh yeah, I forget this is rip-off Britain, isn't it? The Beatles started off in Britain, yet we Brits have to pay well over the odds? What are we paying, export duty to the states and then import duty back into the UK?
Makes my urine boil it does! >:(
Thats fine. Except to use it you have to embed the artwork in every file (thus storing the same data many times). Using the 'Get album artwork' feature stores the artwork once, which seems a far more sensible idea.
OK, I'd quite like a feature in iTunes to take an image file and store it in the same way as the 'get album artwork' feature does, but Apple don't seem interested in implementing this.
See various comments above re the rip-off that is a £10.99 album cost, not to mention the so-called box set. Another example of trying to make people buy stuff they already have to get a little something that they didn't already own.
Who the heck is going to buy this stuff? I would hazard a guess that everyone who actually wanted it, or was vaguely interested in it, already has it digitally. I sure have, as well as the vinyl I bought when it was first released and the original CDs. I refused to but the remastered albums (might have bought them at a fiver each) so I am certainly not going to enrich any of the greedy buggers behind this non-event (and I say that as a big fan for the last 48 years).
But then again, the world is full of mugs! Anyone want to buy some shares? Or a bridge, maybe?
Dear music industry, please FOAD. Soon!
Ancient Oracle funkie sez:
"See various comments above re the rip-off that is a £10.99 album cost, not to mention the so-called box set. Another example of trying to make people buy stuff they already have to get a little something that they didn't already own..."
Right on, there, pal. The only box sets I own are of previously unreleased work -- such as John Lennon's box set released about ten or twelve years ago, or the Grateful Dead's 1995 live anthology box set released right after Garcia died.
I certainly wouldn't buy box sets of albums I already own, not even as gifts for people I know who are interested in getting into a particular band. If that were the case, I'd get them maybe a couple of what I felt were definitive albums by a given band -- say, "Dark Side" and "Ummagumma" for someone who's just getting into Pink Floyd. But, a full box set of everything from "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" to "Division Bell"? Nahh, fuhgeddaboudit.
I am always astounded by Apple's ability to turn anything into an event which the press lap up.
This is truly visionary and revolutionary (no, not the Beatles on iTunes, but rather the amazing manipulation of expectations and image).
Shit, they actually ADDED something to their STORE? Who'da thunk it...
Score yet another media coup for Apple..
I'm a bit underwhelmed because Apple Corps is once again missing the opportunity to release things that the Beatles fans really want and will pay for - to wit, the Shea Stadium concert and the Let It Be film. There is plenty of Beatles material that rarely gets seen in anything approaching high quality - stuff like the NME Pollwinners concerts, the Blackpool Night Out TV show, and the Fabs could really add some value to the proceedings by getting these true rarities out....
Crazy... they call that an announcement!! The only people this benefits are Apple and the Beatles. If anyone actually wants this they will already have it on LP or CD. And if you don't have it already then buy the CDs for much less and then enjoy the sleevenotes and import the tracks into iTunes at a higher quality.... and listen to it in your car.
A bit late, aren't they?
I had all the Beatles' albums on vinyl and cassette when I was in high school and college, and finished replacing them all on CD about five or six years ago. Better sound quality, better sampling rates, better rips to iTunes, no DRM. Too damn' late, Steverino.
Besides, given their App Store's propensity towards random and capricious censorship, I'd be surprised if John Lennon's solo catalogue will ever be available at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkFCDokGesM
M'eh. Some judicious poking around on the collectors' blogs has already netted me some very clean, high-rate sampled soundboard recordings of Shea Stadium '65 and all the Ed Sullivan gigs. Good clean mixes from the original quarter-inch reels, relatively scream-free.
Congratulations to two sets of very rich people with rampant egos, for successfully managing to get together without too many lawyers and agree on how to make even more money for themselves without producing anything new at all.
Well done, rich people! And well done to all who publicised this tremendous event.
They worked hard, did some interesting things... new fad, new decade..... came, rose, fell and faded..
And their albums are HOW old?
And they are selling as digitised downloads - for what?
And EMI are still screwing people for royalties....
I don't know if it's because I am so old I am going senile OR if it really has been so long since they actually released an album.....
And it is nice the entire collection is now available for download, but.......
Some of their material was and still is REALLY great...
I also think well just because my great grandmother had orgasms over them as a school girl, kind of puts them into the class of a 70's remake of a 50's movie.
And there really were heaps of gigs that were WAY more popular than the Beatles - like "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" - the Rolling Stones, The Easy Beats, ABBA, The Who, etc., etc., etc....
As my good friend Malcom McLarem said, "That old necropheliac rock and roll"...
Should be $3 to $5 an album - I mean it's THAT old and you don't even get anything solid to go with them.
Tool Of Lucifer sez on 11.17.10 @ 22:04gmt:
"They worked hard, did some interesting things... new fad, new decade..... came, rose, fell and faded..
And their albums are HOW old?"
Hey, when music is timeless, it's timeless. There are people in college now who weren't even born when the Beatles split up who are totally digging them, for the same reason there are younger people out there who still dig Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra -- their music is great, and timeless.
"And EMI are still screwing people for royalties...."
'an unlimited supply
and there is no reason why!
I tell you, it was all a frame!
They only did it 'cause of fame!
WHO?
EMI! EMI! EMI! EMI!'
--sex pistols.
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