beatles

Updated 6:40 p.m. to clarify difference between publishing rights and rights to recordings.

Four decades ago, Paul McCartney told us that all you need is love. Reportedly near the conclusion of an expensive divorce proceeding, apparently the former Beatle could also use some cash.

Word is that McCartney has given his approval to make The Beatles' song catalog available on Apple's iTunes in the coming months, according to reports in several British newspapers.

The deal for the Fab Four's songs could be worth $600 million, some papers estimated.

Apple representatives were not immediately available to comment … Read more

After years of speculation about when The Beatles music catalog would finally be offered on iTunes, that day may soon arrive.

London's Telegraph reported on Saturday that former Beatle Paul McCartney has agreed to release the band's music catalog to Apple for as much as $600 million.

Is this finally the end of the on-again, off-again courtship between Apple and Apple Corps. The latter is the media corporation that oversees The Beatles' music and other copyright materials.

Rumors that The Beatles' music would be available for download on iTunes have circulated for years, but this time they carry … Read more

If you read CD or LP credits you've probably seen "Mastered by Greg Calbi" a bunch of times, but don't have a clue exactly what Calbi and other mastering engineers do. I don't blame you--it's a mystery to most music lovers. When I heard that Calbi was going to cut some LP masters I made arrangements to drop by Sterling Sound and watch the master masterer at work. He's mastered thousands of records--everybody from Bob Dylan to Talking Heads to The Roots, to the High School Musical soundtrack, and one of my favorite … Read more

A reader responding to my The Beatles on iTunes? Who Cares? rant came up with this great summation: "iTunes are to audio what McDonald's is to hamburgers, but if this is how the public wants to buy music, then let 'em have it." Right on! Sound quality doesn't matter anymore, just the so-called convenience of downloading 1s and 0s at the cheapest possible price, or better yet for free. Why buy the complete "Sgt Pepper" when you can just get "With A Little Help From My Friends"? That's where it's … Read more

Paul McCartney is now saying the Beatles catalog won't be available on iTunes until sometime next year. Yeah so? Maybe I don't get it, but didn't the "digitalization" of the Beatles catalog happen more than twenty years ago when they put out the CDs? So why are iTunes buyers a vast untapped Beatles market? The catalog is already online--if you have a hankering for Abbey Road buy the CD from Amazon and rip it right now.

I could give a hoot about the long-running legal feud between the Beatles' music label Apple Corps and Steve … Read more

Last week, George Harrison--who created the best post-Beatles solo album, the gorgeous All Things Must Pass--became the fourth of the Fab Four to go online. His full solo catalog is available on iTunes and other music stores now. Today, Led Zeppelin confirmed that its entire catalog will be released online Nov. 13, not just the songs on the new greatest hits compilation, Mothership. Zeppelin will also follow AC/DC and sell its songs as ringtones on Verizon Wireless.

Surely, the full Beatles must be next?

New Jersey radio station WFMU--which may well be the best radio station in the world--has a blog called Beware of the Blog. The other day, they posted an MP3 file from listener Steve McLaughlin containing all the Beatles' U.K. albums, digitally time-compressed into a single hour. (No Magical Mystery Tour because it was a double EP, not an LP.) It sounds a bit like the sped-up President Bush speech at the end of Godspeed You Black Emperor's vinyl version of Yanqui U.X.O., only, it's the Beatles.

Then, some enterprising listeners took the McLaughlin MP3 and … Read more