Sir Paul McCartney has blamed music giant EMI for the delays which have prevented The Beatles back catalogue appearing legally on download services such as iTunes.
"We were having problems with iTunes – well not iTunes, EMI was the problem – with downloading, which we'd like to do because that's how a lot of people get their music," Sir Paul told the NME.
An Apple music themed event planned for tomorrow - Wednesday 9 September - at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, California may yet have a Beatles tie-in.
The date also sees The Beatles back catalogue remastered and repackaged along with the launch of 'The Beatles: Rock Band,' video game for Xbox, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii.
The former Beatle added that 'The Beatles: Rock Band,' offered a 'back door' for fans to download songs.
"We've kind of bypassed that [download problems] because now you can do it in 'Rock Band', I always liked that, when you're told you can't do something and suddenly there's a little route round the back."
This week's NME magazine, also on sale tomorrow, comes with a choice of 13 different covers - one for each LP release.
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Comments received
dave said on Tue, 08 Sep 2009
This sounds like 100% bullshit. EMI was the first of the major labels to drop DRM on their music, and seem more progressive than the rest. And the Beatles are power unto themselves.
@dave said on Tue, 08 Sep 2009
Dropping DRM <> allowing The Beatles Catalog on iTunes. They are two different subjects.
Greendave said on Tue, 08 Sep 2009
Ok - the full story.
From The Guardian interview with Sir Paul Mc
So what’s been the hold-up all this time? McCartney tells Observer Music Monthly: “We’ve been keen to do this for a while. I met Guy Hands on a plane once. His crew bought EMI. I refer to them as Terracotta but I believe it’s Terra Firma. I said: ‘What is the problem? I want to do it, we all want to do it.’ And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed. <…and he said> ”If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, ‘Now you recompense us for that.’ And they’re scared of that.”
That is not being scared - only an idiot would accept such terms. Finally we know why the Beatles have not made it onto iTunes. Hopefully, they will have dropped those ridiculous terms and we can have some Beatles on iTunes on Wednesday - but don’t hold your breath.
Stewart Donald said on Tue, 08 Sep 2009
It appears that the Beatles might be appearing tomorrow after all. Sky had an interview with Yoko a couple of hours ago which would suggest that the entire collection will be available from tomorrow. The story has now been pulled from the website but links to the page which contained the story show in the google search engine. Interesting.
London said on Wed, 09 Sep 2009
@ Stewart
Yoko isn't Beatle, she just sh*gged one.
Marc said on Mon, 14 Sep 2009
Hahahaha, if digitized Beatles music gets out? Have a clue! Look: I go to the library, get one of the CD's, take it home and put it in my iMac, which asks: 'would you like to add this music to your collection?'. YES.
Done. But I'd rather buy it from iTunes if I had the choice. Go figure, these people are sooo stupid.
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