Will they, or won’t they? It’s been a while since there’s been this much music biz speculation – the most recent brouhaha in regards to the release of the posthumous Michael Jackson concert video comes to mind – but everyone (or is it just journalists?) wants to know: will The Beatles catalogue ever be available on iTunes?
In the latest issue of Billboard (headlined, rather exceptionally, “The Beatles 2.0″), Executive Editor Robert Levine interviews Sir Paul about Rock Band, The Beatles catalog, and other pressing topics. But if you stick with the interview right up to the last utterance, this, to me, would seem as good a confirmation as any that the group’s music will crop up on the music service.
Asked point-blank by Levine about iTunes, McCartney explains that the band has taken a round-about way of making their music available for download due to a “logjam” at EMI, and that, yes, it will eventually be available on iTunes. Direct from Billboard.com:
“That originally was mentioned a number of years ago and we all sort of said we’d look at it. But there was a logjam with the people who took over EMI-there were some aspects of the whole thing that they became nervous about. So we’re just waiting. Meantime, as you say, it’s kind of interesting, because virtually the same kind of thing is going to happen with “Rock Band”-you’re going to be able to download albums from that. We bypassed the logjam-not really intentionally. But one day I think that it’s natural that it will be on iTunes.”
Filed under: music
