Beatles and EMI Make Nice, Edging Closer to iTunes
Posted by Emru Townsend | Thursday, April 12, 2007 7:51 PM PT
It's almost exactly a year since we first reported that the Beatles were
having their music catalog digitally remastered, (hopefully) in anticipation of a forthcoming iTunes release.
On the heels of February's
settlement between Apple (the Beatles' music company) and Apple (the computer company), another obstacle has been knocked down. Earlier today, it was announced that Apple (the Beatles' company) has
settled their long-standing dispute with EMI over five years' worth of royalties. This leaves the two entities free to start new royalty negotiations over online sales, which brings us tantalizingly close to the possibility of the Beatles' music appearing on iTunes and possibly other online music services.
Let's not forget that EMI is moving to DRM-free music
next month -- which just may be the thing to hurry those negotiations along.
What a joke... Anyone who wanted a song peformed by this 50 year old pop quartet has already got it. But wait a second... if they "re-master" them then I'll rush out and actually buy them this time! LOL!
I'll probably be the first in line. I've bought fewer CDs over the years as my online purchases have gone up, and I've never gotten around to buying any Beatles discs except one (the collection of #1s, which I picked up at a garage sale for $2). The same goes for a number of other musical acts -- love the music, just never had the chance to buy them on CD or didn't want to buy an entire CD for just a handful of songs.
Good for you... Paying for music half a century old is very sweet. EMI loves you and so do the surviving cronies of the group. Meantime the rest of the world downloads them for free.
There's a head-scratcher of a comment. It implies that you only pay for new music and that old music should be free. What's your dividing line between old and new?