Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced a joint press conference with EMI in London town, and speculation ran rampant from that point on. Finally getting that Beatles catalogue on iTunes? Even NYT can’t resist reporting the rumors:
Theories ranged from a Yellow Submarine iPod factory-filled with Beatles music to a more radical shift toward selling digital music without copy protection.
Or maybe Apple’s obtained rights to sell footage of the Beatles’ long-lost appearance on Doctor Who in ’65. But if it is just iTunes selling Fab Four files … at this point who gives a fuck? We all have the Beatles catalogue. Many of us paid for it. Bundle it with a free video of Heather Mills dancing, though, and maybe they’re onto something.
Tune in to the conference at 8AM EST (in fifteen minutes!) right here.
UPDATE: Score one for Jobs. EMI announces that it “is launching DRM-free superior quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire and that Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell EMI’s new downloads.” Steve should write letters more often.
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This is awesome. EMI just killed the two biggest problems with MP3′s: low quality and DRM.
True, we all have the Beatles catalogue, but iTunes is supposed to get first call on the remastered catalogue before the remastered albums are released in stores…though i’ll probably wait and buy the hard copies anyway.
A giant 30% price increase for single tracks that are still non-cd (i.e., non-FLAC) quality?
Wow 30%! That sounds like a whole lot!
Oh, we’re still talking about 30% of one dollar? Nevermind, then.
Seems like a small price to pay to throw mud in the eye of crippled downloads.
Uhm, not the outcome anyone was looking for – $1.29 per track is bullshit to the highest degree!
“$1.29 per track is bullshit to the highest degree!”
Meaning what? You’ll buy CDs instead or you’ll just keep stealing…er…”sharing” them?
If you don’t like the price or the value, then don’t buy the product. If you prefer the value of CDs, then buy them instead. But stealing is what people without ethics do.
At least now there’s a satisfying choice.
Personally, I’ll upgrade my past purchases.
I’m still going to stick to emusic for most of my downloading needs, but really this is awesome. When is it going to launch?