Happy holiday news for all of us who use Android products. The Beatles’ catalog is finally available on Android devices. No more Apple-only exclusivity. Free on Amazon Prime, if you have it.
Thank you, Santa!
Also on spotify as of today.
Pardon me for saying, but you could have always just ripped their CDs and put them on your phone at any time. Perfectly legal too (as long as you owned the CDs). In fact, because Android allows the use of SD cards, it would be even easier than with an iPhone…
Or download from Amazon. Or stream MyIndieApp Beatles Radio.
I couldn’t figure out where to plug my cassettes into my phone.
I went to Amazon to check it out. I remember getting so many of the Beatles albums for Christmas. Particularly Magical Mystery Tour. So sad. It’s not the album I had. Did they do different UK/USA albums for everything? Simply couldn’t listen to it as an album. Back in the day, album continuity meant everything. I don’t want the songs out of order, dammit!!!
During the 1960’s-80’s, the pre-Sgt. Pepper’s albums released on Capitol Records in the US were different from the UK versions. The UK versions are what were released when the Beatles became available on CD and are what’s now on Amazon.
Magical Mystery Tour is the exception, which was originally only released as a full-length LP in the US, which is the version we have now.
In any case, if the songs aren’t in the order you prefer/recognize, you could put together a playlist of the tracks in the “correct” order.
I’ve had the Beatles on many many devices since the dawn of hardware capable of playing MP3 files, probably 10 or 15 years ago.
Anyone who has CDs of music that they would like to have on their phone/computer whatever, use iTunes or software like CDEx to convert the music to MP3 files. Copy the MP3 files to your phone/whatever and you’re in business. iPhones need to use iTunes to copy the music to their phone.
Yeah, I’m not getting the need for huge celebration here. Buy Beatles CDs (probably most of them in the used CD rack) , rip them into whatever music software you have that can convert to MP3s, and move to your device, either by a sync or a physical memory card.
Could have had this years ago. All that changed recently was the agreement to stream the Beatles catalog. Big whoop.
The reason this development made me happy was not that I couldn’t have obtained the music in other forms and loaded it to an mp3 player. I could have, if I had been willing to buy the music in yet another form. I have all the Beatles’ music still on the albums I purchased way back in the day. It’s unwieldy to have music in several forms, but I do. I’ve quibbled at re-buying all my music every time there was a new and improved format, so I still have albums, cassettes, cds, and mp3s for newer music.
But now, with the catalog on Amazon Prime, I can stream it without having to shell out the money and buy it yet again.
Clearly this will not apply to those willing to rebuy their music, but for me, it was happy dance time.
I’ve had Beatles music on my Android since I got my first smartphone in 2010. I’m sure earlier Androids also had the capability to play any music you desired. Apple users are the only ones stifled by these weird sorts of licensing agreements.
The big deal isn’t that you can get it on Android now, it’s that it’s now on the various streaming services like Spotify, Google Play Music, etc.
But that means they’re available for iphone the same way, right?
I don’t get why the choice of OS is relevant here. It’s not like Spotify said “We won’t let smartphone users listen to the Beatles unless they have an iphone”. They didn’t have the rights, and nobody could stream the Beatles on Spotify, regardless of what brand of smartphone they use, and now that they’ve got the rights, everybody can stream Beatles music on Spotify, regardless of what brand of smartphone they use. That’s my understanding. Am I wrong?
Not true. I already owned many Beatles CDs. When I got my first iPod back in the day, I ripped those CDs to my computer and synced them to my iPod. All perfectly legal since I already “owned” the music. Same exact thing has always applied to iPhones as well.
No different from how an Android user would have done it. Not everything has to be an Apple vs. Android thing.
How is that exactly?
Well, I’m not really an Apple user, so maybe I’m wrong. But iOS cannot be rooted. You cannot get administrator privileges on an iphone. So it is possible to prevent playback of certain music in software, whereas in my rooted Android, I’d just delete that part of the software and play what I wanted.
For example, iphone users have to pay extra for the ability to make their phone into a wifi hotspot. I can do that for free. I don’t even need an app, it’s included functionality in the OS I installed on my phone. I’m pretty sure there are other features my phone has included that cost extra on iphones or aren’t available at all. I assumed this was the case in this situation. I’ve heard enough stories about such and such “finally coming to iphones”, I thought the music situation was similar.
SO perhaps I was wrong saying that iphone users are effected by license agreements this way. But I’m still right in saying that they could be, in a way Android is immune from.
Again, this is not an apple versus android thing. But most of what you posted there is wrong. You are confusing features of the operating system versus carrier functionality. I can, and have been able to for years, wifi hotspot all day long, no apps needed. The only time I could not do that with my iPhone was when i was with ATT, who at the time, did not allow that functionality.
Point is, none of this matters to the the topic in this thread. I could care less for “rooting” a device. As long as I owned the music, i could sync it to my iphone/ipod/whatever. No Apple limitations on that, did not matter whether the Beatles approved of it or not.
The Beatles stuff hitting STREAMING services is the only new thing here. Streaming is 100% operating system neutral.
You could do a wifi hotspot on an at&t iPhone, at&t just insisted on making you pay extra to. They’ve since ended that restriction. Apple originally included DRM in their AAC music file format but they too have since stopped doing this. And besides, that only applied to music you bought from iTunes. You could always also add whatever music files you ripped from CDs or any other non-DRM file format. iTunes itself will rip any CD and add it to your iTunes library.
I genuinely don’t understand what you’re saying here. Can you give me a real world example of what you’re talking about?
iOS has a built-in Instant Hotspot feature that is as simple as tapping a button. Many cell plans include tethering; if yours doesn’t but you are still using it as a hotspot, you are probably violating your contract with your provider. I don’t like AT&T, Verizon, etc any more than the next guy, but I hardly think abuse of their service is a good bullet point to promote.
No, I don’t think you’ve successfully made that point. You seem to be conflating the Beatles licensing deal with avoiding hotspot charges by way of rooting your phone. One is a licensing issue between a rights holder and streaming music companies, the other is a contract issue between you and your cell provider. Can you list some other “licensing agreements” that make your point? Or are just saying that rooting is teh magicsauce that makes everything better?
Whether I use the wifi hotspot or not shouldn’t have anything to do with my carrier. They provide me the pipe, I hook up whatever hoses I want to it. This is the problem I have with iphones. It isn’t my carrier’s decision what I do with the bandwidth I bought from them. They just need to send me the bits I request, no matter what device does the requesting. A device that sides with carriers against users is user hostile and should not be used by anyone.
I don’t have to worry about that with Android, because any competent programmer can fix it so it isn’t an issue. The fact that the OS is open source means I can ask any skilled programmer to modify my OS, or do it myself. Or more likely, use one that has been modified before the fact and shared on the internet.
I don’t need Google’s permission to use my phone how I see fit. If I had an iphone, I would need to get my carrier’s permission to use the wifi hotspot feature. My assumption, erroneous though it may have been, was that music licensing worked the same way. If Apple doesn’t approve, you don’t get it. My mistake. Though the premise of this thread (that the music you are “allowed” to listen to on your phone depends on your OS) made that mistake pretty easy to make, in my opinion.