The Beatles: whatever

I'm 24 years old. I was born 2 years after John Lennon was assassinated -- thus I have no real emotional connection with The Beatles as a cultural event. Plus, I listen to mostly new music.-And yet, if the Beatles were able to show up on iTunes tomorrow (and we know they won't), especially remastered - I would buy it in a second. It doesn't matter that I already have their entire collection on CD (including both the red and blue "Greatest Hits" 2-disc sets, the re-mastered Yellow Submarine, Let it Be...Naked, 1 and the LOVE CD both on regular redbook CD and DVD-A) - a remastered Beatles collection, especially one available digitally (and it would have to be iTunes Plus, that is one caveat - I won't pay for anything that is 128 AAC - that's just stupid) would be something that I would just instantly purchase. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Most of my friends also like the Beatles (I'm probably a bigger fan, but practically everyone has at least one CD or has downloaded at least one album) - but it has become so easy to get stuff online, that becomes the de-facto way to purchase music. Not only that, but my mom, who was 16 when the Beatles hit the US, would buy all the stuff in a second. Yeah, she has some of the CDs - but she's too tecnically gun-shy to understand the concept of ripping a CD (and it doesn't matter how many times I've shown her, she just doesn't get it and it isn't worth the effort for her), but she would love to rebuy all her favorite hits at iTunes and load it onto her Nano. I'm sure she's not alone.

The Beatles is the crown jewel in making online distribution totally legitimate -- once you have the biggest band availalble online, it no longer becomes a fad - it becomes a real delivery mechanism and a real way to get music. As dumb as that may sound, it sometimes takes that sort of commitment for lots of people to buy into an idea. The Beatles becoming available digitally in a legal way is a huge deal - not only to Apple, but to digital music in general.

I guess the Beatles became a big deal to the mac community when Jobs + Woz named the company in honor of the beatles some 30 years.

Can't say how much I agree with you. My finger is well trained to hit the k key (google reader) at the remotest hint of yet another itunes/beatles post.

This article is lame and missing the real point. iTunes having the Beatles helps make iTunes an even more legitimate music store. How can you call iTunes the future of music distribution if you can't even buy music from the greatest, most famous band of all time?

Besides the whole remastering thing, which I don't necessarily care about, it is important for the younger kids who don't know the Beatles to be able to discover them. The kids that depend on iTunes for their music still don't have access to them. This is about establishing the Beatles for the future as well.

Overall though, I still don't think adding the Beatles to the music store requires an event. It would be a good "one more thing" though.

Am I the only hard-core --- if you want to punish me, tie me up and make be stare at a Window's PC, --- Mac user who is really getting tired of the quarterly, not so electrifying press conferences? Not to mention the "Ooops, Apple knew nothing about it media leaks."

I love Steve. I would kiss his ring finger if I could get close enough to the podium. But this is becoming lame.

By the way. Does anyone know if someone is live blogging the event?

I heart my Macintosh. Gulp, gulp. Drinking the Apple flavored Kool-aid. *;) I wouldn’t think about missing the event if it is being blogged.

I agree with #13.

What music store doesn't have the Beatles? I don't think the music is as important as getting one of the last (biggest/most popular bands in history) to license their content.

Beatles manager Neil Aspanall mentioned this in May 2006 during the Apple vs. Apple case:

"We're remastering the whole Beatles catalog, just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages," Aspinall explained. "I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters. It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc."

So its not the prospect of buying The Beatles' music in yet another format that is exciting fans - it's the prospect of getting a proper remaster to The Beatles albums to replace the half-assed remaster done for when their CDs were released in 1987.

If it's the same old content from the 1987 remasters on iTunes, the announcement won't be anything more than symbolic.

well spoken

So glad I'm not alone on this one. It has nothing to do with liking/not liking the Beatles. (Though, truth be told, I'd completely burnt myself out on them by the time the last volume of Unsurpassed Masters dropped.) I'm just tired of hearing about this like it's the be all end all that is going to do everything up to cure cancer and end the Iraq war.

Really, I want it to just happen already. That way the initial sales and hype will be huge, then hopefully we can stop hearing about it.

Call me old fashioned, but I'm much more interested in new music than rebuying albums I've grown tired of long ago in the forth new format. (Yes, I am old enough to own some Beatles on 8-track.)

And FWIW, those of you old enough to remember will recall that they were the last big holdout on CD releases as well. Essentially, the catalog was just "dumped" onto CD after all the legalities were sifted through. So those of us who are fans (and there are more than you think, apparently) welcome the re-release (which means a true remastering), and the opportunity to buy them via iTunes.