no beatles 4 u
the bbc has a piece that quotes an EMI spokesperson saying, “The Beatles have chosen not to put their music online.”
of course, the beatles back catalog is already online, but this is a spokesperson talking about “legit” (as in paying for) download sites. i’m also given to understand that green day, beyonce and creed (to name a few more) are not available online.
those of you following my closely probably already know this, but it’s probably worth repeating on this subject. my work on solving the problem of the business of music largely ignores the back catalog. there are a few reasons for this, and this is one of them.
anyway, i don’t want to fault the beatles for this decision (or whomever it was that made the decision) – it’s perfectly legitimate. one of the principles i strongly believe in is that the artist should be able to say “no” and do what they think is in their own [long term] best interest. of course, that opens up the whole issue of getting artists to think in the “long term” but that’s a discussion for another day.
a legal read on this might be that there’s an ongoing dispute between apple (the beatles label) and apple (the computer company) about itunes. anything that could bias that case would be a Very Bad Thing for apple (the beatles).
in any case, since it is the beatles, it was worth mentioning.