Rumors: The Beatles on iTunes? Yoko says yes, EMI says not yet

If today's event were going to be centered around the Beatles' catalog showing up on iTunes, would they have called it "It's Only Rock and Roll," a title associated most with The Rolling Stones?

Steve Jobs gave them 100 million in advance for iTunes having it first. In fact, he might have given more. Getting the Beatles on iTunes would be a huge deal. And why else pick 9/9 as the date to do an event?

Plus, Paul and Ringo will be there to play. You wait. It is gonna happen.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is in this "trailer" for the remastered albums on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m2MSEVRMFY4KDN

(Thanks to TowerTone for the link, earlier in these comments.)

About 1:00 into the video, it says, "New QuickTime mini-documentary included on each of the 13 original albums." Clearly, they could have left out the word "QuickTime" and that sentence would have worked just as well. (Better, actually. Only hard-core nuts like us care about specific video formats.)

Why would they go out of their way to mention that the mini-documentaries are in QuickTime? Perhaps it has something to do with Apple's expected announcement tomorrow about "Cocktail" -- enhanced features for album purchases in the iTunes Music Store?

I'm not suggesting that you'd have to buy the albums on iTunes to get the mini-documentaries. If you buy a remastered Beatles album on CD, the video is probably loaded on a CD-R portion of the disc. If you buy a Beatles album on iTunes, you get the mini-documentary as a bonus download.

Either way, it sounds like the new albums have a connection with Apple Computer, prominently mentioning QuickTime like that.

Of course, this is just speculation on my part, and we'll all know for certain tomorrow. But the coincidences are really starting to pile up.

I say... who gives a shit?

For years Apple has been trying to drag these dimwits kicking and screaming to the money-tree.

Somehow, I suspect they will find a way to lose their way again. I also predict sales will be less than stellar when it does drop. If you wanted their stuff, chances are somehow it's already made it to your iTunes. If you are 14-25, you probably don't care anyway.

I just hope they didn't botch the remastering like the did for the 25th anniversary edition of Band on the Run

why all the hate? nobody's forcing you to listen to them or buy the set. I'm sure the beatles fans aren't hating on us because we eagerly anticipate every single apple product refresh AND put more quarters in the rumor mill when something is supposed to come out. you don't see beatles fanboys doing cgi mockups of CD cases and cover art. the apple crowd has no place to speak when it comes to rabid fandom (and I have 3 macs, and more ipods than I can count)

if you look around for "2009 beatles remasters" you'll find a lot of links to audio centric blogs and most of the comments from the self proclaimed or "professional" audio nerds make it sound like this latest round of remasters is impressive from a 100% technical perspective. they don't necessarily care about the music, but the painstaking process they're using this time. almost makes me want to buy the set just so I can hear them for myself.

FYI this set is being released on a very limited run of LP's (that's huge), they're even releasing a set in mono since a lot of the ORIGINAL recordings weren't even stereo to begin with. (i've seen rumors that the mono version will be uncompressed)

Beatles fans, I really hope you enjoy this set. Apple fans, we have a press event to froth at the mouth over tomorrow.

It may be a first for The Beatles, but I gotta say -- it's annoying to be amidst such hype, insisting that I should care about something that I just really really don't care about.

Nice little video

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m2MSEVRMFY4KDN

What do you mean "done right"? How do you screw up a digital distribution? Mistag the files?

Yoko? Oh, no....