There is a fair amount of publicity at the moment about an American site that is offering Beatles tracks for downloading and streaming for a paltry rate. (I won’t link to or name it, as it’s almost certainly illegal.)
In my experience, when there is huge demand for a product - as there certainly is for Beatles music - those who stand to benefit from it legally usually find a way to meet that demand. But year after year Apple, EMI and the Beatles can’t seem to find a way to make the music available digitally. They’ve never, AFAIK, disclosed what the stumbling block is, but it must be pretty major to turn down the opportunity to earn millions of dollars.
Again, AFAIK, they are the only major artists to not have crossed the digital hurdle at all.
They can. They just don’t want to. Primarily, no one has made them an offer for the rights that they are willing to accept.
The Beatles* make millions of dollars already. They don’t want to jeopardize that revenue stream by putting things online. With the recent release of the Beatles remasters, it’s clear that there is plenty of market for their work on CD.
*Well, McCartney and Yoko Ono – Ringo and the Harrison estate make less since they have fewer songwriting credits, but they’re not exactly hurting.
From what I’ve read, there’ve been negotiations for some time – at the last Apple conference, a month or two ago, the big (but inaccurate) speculation was that they would be announcing that they’d finally gotten the rights to sell Beatles music in the iTunes store.
Not that they’re anywhere near as “major”, but I’ve not been able to find legal downloads of any AC/DC songs.
I think RealityChuck had it right. They want to make it available online, but cannot come to an agreement on the terms. The thinking isn’t “Let’s not make our music available online.” It is "Let’s not make it available in 2009, but if we hold out maybe we’ll get a better offer in 2010.
Being a huge Floyd fan, I can say, unequivocally, yes.
On your previous point, as most bands seem to come to an agreement, are these people being greedy? There must come a time when they start losing more than they gain by delaying the availability.
All the Pink Floyd albums are available on Rhapsody. None of the Beatles’ or AC/DC’s.
Led Zep is in a weird grey area. They had a big announcement about them suddenly being available without actually making them available. Some are available for sale. None for subscription downloads.
I’d guess that about 15% of the artists that I want to listen to are not available on Rhapsody. Led Zep, Beatles & AC/DC are the biggest names that I can think of who are missing.
I always figured the dispute over the Apple brand name had something to do with it at the beginning, when Apple was the only company offering legal downloads. The two companies have a pretty long and ugly history of lawsuits; in one of the settlements Apple computer agreed not to enter the music business, and the music company sued them over that when they started iTunes.
For what it’s worth- Kid Rock also is another person who doesn’t do the selling of Albums online- but he tends to have his albums sell and then promotes them for 1-2 years releasing singles much later than most bands would to promote an album.
I don’t understand how putting legal version of their songs online jeopardizes them any more than what’s already out there. You can download illegal versions of their songs basically anywhere (and many torrents exist with their entire catalog available in one go), so if you wanted to get free Beatles, the cat is out the bag and already has a litter of 20 adorable little kittens. I’d wager that some of those illegal downloaders may be willing to pay for Beatles downloads. Not a high percentage, mind you, but greater than zero.
A huge part of this is the fact that there is so much Beatles music available online ILLEGALLY.
This curbs the demand because it’s already being satisfied.
Go try to find a CD by Helen Reddy or Crystal Gayle online and illegally download it. Good luck finding it. Or other such artists and you might find a greatest hits CD but that’s about it.
But bands like the Beatles or Madonna or Michael Jackson are just all over the Internet and being illegally traded in such volume it’d be impossible to stop.
The Beatles *are *available digitally. They’ve been out on CD for many years. Not being downloadable is just a lack of a particular distribution method, not a lack of a particular product. I fail to see the big deal here.
The big deal is that even if downloads and CD’s are both digital, they are still different markets, with downloading becoming the standard for the new generation music consumers. It is also about making the on-line spread of this music ‘legit’. And third, it is the Beatles, the most important rock band of all time. Their absence from such a big development is very noticable.
Besides, I wouldn’t mind listening to Sergeant Pepper on Spotify.
As noted above, Spotify (or similar services) is one reason. I have no problem paying 15$ or so per month to spotify to be able to listen to music without the hassle of finding and downloading it, or ripping cd’s. But when mayor players don’t embrace this way of distribution, they hold back the (imo) nescessary modernisation needed to curb illegal music distributions. Streaming services will be the de facto way of getting music in the near future, is my guess.