The Beatles On iTunes 551
Yesterday Apple put a big old teaser up on their homepage for an unknown
announcement to occur today. Speculation ran rampant from the delayed
iOS 4.2, to iTunes Streaming to a release of the Beatles catalog on the iTunes
store. Well, it was the latter. They have 13 albums on the store now, and a $150
box set. So here's hoping that we get that iPad multitasking yet this November.
Cheaper to buy CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the CD box set is selling for $130 on amazon (and I thought I read recently someone was offering it for around $100). I thought downloads were supposed to be cheaper than the physical CDs.
Re:White Album (Score:1, Insightful)
...or rip it to mp3 from the cd like everyone else with an IQ over 70.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. The Beatles are overrated.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps I just don't like the Beatles enough to think this is a good thing ... but ...
My solution to bands who 'refuse' to be put on iTunes, for any reason?
I don't buy their shit. I won't buy anything from the Beatles or Metallica ever again for that reason, even if they change their minds later.
You guys go cater to their self absorbed temper tantrums and sense of entitlement. I'll pass and buy things from people who actually appreciate my money.
Just like the announcement (Score:3, Insightful)
O frabjous day!
The Beatles are on iTunes! Truly this is a day that we "will never forget [slashgear.com]".
Move over 7/25/2006 (remember - the day that Metallica finally joined the fold?), because 11/16/2010 is the new biggest day in the history of music. Ever.
Remember folks, your task for this morning is to delete the 100-200 Beatles songs in your iTunes folder so that you can download the exact same files from Apple.
Meh (Score:1, Insightful)
This is their big announcement? Why should I care about whether I can buy music by some old hippies on iTunes, particularly when it's been available in a plethora of other formats for 30 years? Answer: I don't!
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. The Beatles are overrated.
I tend to agree, but only because they are so very, very, unquestioningly highly rated by so many.
It's also easy to dismiss them, as an overreaction to the adulation. Your post underrates them.
A few hours with Beatles Rock Band (which is a great motivator for attentive listening) will remind you that they *were* very good indeed.
Re:Cheaper to buy CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, because we didn't buy into their self absorbed crying about how their 'art' should be sold.
They aren't that good, seriously. When people and companies think they are so special that they will not allow you to buy something in an alternate form when there is massive demand because they are greedy self entitled fucks ... you should probably shop elsewhere so they get the point. Of course its too late for that, so instead you're just going to keep getting ripped off by paying $130 for a boxed set that costs them literally $5 to make, or $150 that cost them $0.05 to let you download.
At this point, anyone who buys anything Beatles related is rather retarded for doing so.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't already own every Beatles album, I feel sorry for you.
Does borrowing your grandfathers copies count? They are interesting, but with the cultural reference points being half a century ago, they are kind of hard to relate to like the kids half a century related to them. One of those "you had to be there" moments.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheaper to buy CDs (Score:2, Insightful)
$150 in iTunes US, and 149€ in iTunes France for the CD Box Set?
Damn you Apple and your currency rate! $1 != 1€, and the music files are the same all around the planet.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not overrated, but played to death and embraced by mainstream society to the point that any rock-and-roll rebellion aspect is gone.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I liked many of their songs the first 200,000 times I heard them.
Lame non-news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sosumi (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet there's the trademark dispute over the Apple brand...
Since apparently you weren't paying attention, there was the trademark dispute but it was permanently resolved [appleinsider.com] years ago.
(BTW it's amusing that you use the sosumi example instead of when they later sued when Apple started iTunes -- which I felt they actually had a solid basis on which to stand.)
space exploration vs itunes (Score:1, Insightful)
Sad when a story about the second time ever we've returned material from space, that was posted before this one, has fewer comments and interest than yet another itunes story, even on a supposed tech website. We're not what we were. What happened to us, we were trying for the stars once...
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, no band could live up to the hype the Beatles get. Not even the Kinks.
Re:Cheaper to buy CDs (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would you think that? Because distribution costs are virtually nil, as every torrent site on the Internet amply demonstrates?
Corporations are going to be selling your own culture back to you for the rest of your life. The baby boomers aren't going to live to see the copyright expire on Beatles songs. They will be paying for the Forrest Gump soundtrack from their retirement homes.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:2, Insightful)
A few hours with Beatles Rock Band
And this is the extent of your musical knowledge, no wonder you like the Beatles.
I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.
Re:Don't for get the sound engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
And if I was an "audiophile" and cared about the pixie dust, I might care. Back in the real world, 90% of human beings won't be able to tell the difference between that rip that the "professional sound engineers" spent "months" on (which I highly doubt in the first place), and your 196Kbps rip using CDEX + LAME.
Re:Good, but overrated products (Score:5, Insightful)
>Both are scarcely more than a thin veneer over the status quo.
Oh, I wouldn't say that about the Beatles. If you look at the Beatles peers when they were active you'll see that they weren't just "white plastic on OEM crap." Lets skip past their early stuff which is admittingly cookie cutter to Rubber Soul's release in 1965. The Billboard top 100 had acts like Sonny and Cher and songs like "Wooley Bully." Or when the Beatles released Revolver in 1966, the charts were leading with stuff like the Mamas and Papas. Sgt Peppers was released in 1967 when the Billboards top song was stuff like I'm A Believer by the Monkees. Its weird to even think of them as competing peers considering how far and away Sgt Peppers is from anything mainstream release.
I think the Beatles really earned their reputation as game changers. They're one of the first rock bands to really begin exploring outside the mainstream, challenge the status quo, and succeeding at this without alienating listeners. Its odd to think that by 1969 they were pretty much done, but if you listen to a lot of the music from the 1970s you'll hear quite a bit of Beatles influence. I think they really wrote the template on how to make rock music that isn't just disposable catchy hits and could be something closer to fine art than just music to dance/get high/get laid to.
Re:Or you can download them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says you have to? Do you feel pressured when a car company announces the current year`s model?
How about the autumn release of Levis jeans?
Heck... that pint of milk is dépassé by now. RUSH NOW to buy this week`s release!! ... or just realize you made a short-sighted comment and move on.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:1, Insightful)
"The Beatles are just your grandpa's Justin Bieber."
You have lived up to your Slashdot ID.
Re:White Album (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheaper to buy CDs (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought downloads were supposed to be cheaper than the physical CDs
Clearly you are new to the iTunes store.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A few hours with Beatles Rock Band
And this is the extent of your musical knowledge, no wonder you like the Beatles.
I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.
I do play real guitar - among other instruments - and take pleasure in more complex forms than The Beatles, as well as in more minimal and direct music.
However I'll continue to defend Guitar Hero / Rock Band as a tool for music appreciation. It draws your attention to details of the parts that are easy to overlook. It's a good way to actually concentrate on music -- few people nowadays listen to music and give it their full attention.
I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting. There's a hell of a lot of variety in there: She Loves You, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I am the Walrus, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Helter Skelter, I Got A Feeling ... all very different from one another.
Re:Or you can download them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
That...doesn't make any sense.
Having a band like The Beatles on iTunes should send their stock skyrocketing. The amount of money all parties involved are going to make is going to be huge. If there's one band that people rebuy over and over again, it's The Beatles.
Except that many of their first-generation fans are now retirement age and just don't care to buy it in a new format.
If those folks had already re-bought it on every new format, then it follows that they already have it on CD.
Seriously, if you already had something on CD, why would you re-buy it on iTunes?
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.
That's because you're too young to be able to see what an effect the Beatles had on music and indeed, society (actually, societies) in general.
When you've heard something all your life, it's commonplace.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't disagree with you, but only because they are overrated in the same way that Tolkien is overrated. That is, if you look at him compared to contemporary sources, he appears unimaginative, derivative, and even predictable. And then you take a big step back and you suddenly realize that there was nothing before it to be a derivative of. The started something new, something that took on a life of it's own, and they were so iconic that you can still hear their sounds in music today, 50 years later.
Re:White Album (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it will be that big a deal money-wise. Most Beetles fans will have already ripped their CDs onto their iPods. Yes they will sell some Beetles tacks on iTunes, but compared to all the big releases that go on iTunes from time to time, this is probably nothing special. Stockholders were probably expecting something like a Verizon version of the iPhone which would bring a lot more customers to Apple.
Re:Life is real (Score:4, Insightful)
I had that same problem with Einstein. Clearly, I'm much smarter than him.
Re:White Album (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides the Beatles are pretty much the best selling band of all time. In the 2000s only eminem sold more records then the Beatles. In a decade three full decades after the broke up, and with out a new medium to be released on they were the second best selling artist. They may not be a big deal to you but they are a pretty big deal.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If all music has to stand on is rebellion, and once that aspect is gone it is not longer interesting, it was bad music to begin with. It was a purely cultural phenomena, meaning shallow and transient, meaning the people who listened to it were shallow and transient.
This is why around 90% of punk sucks, even before 1979. This is why 90% of everything probably sucks, but we just don't realize it until the trend moves on. This is why most of the crap I listened to in high school (metal and grunge) has become JUST crap. It was only interesting in that specific cultural time and place, but was completely uninteresting. At best it was a reaction to some events that are no longer relevant, at midling it was a mere scene, and at worst an act of marketing and targeted demographics.
Some of it survived very well, meaning it has more to it than just a social trend, it was musically interesting, even beyond its cultural relevance. The Clash (pre-80's) survived, Zeppelin survived, Bob Dylan, and a large selection of classic blues survived. The Beatles, for the most part, did too. Well, they did if you weed McCartney's influence out of it, and focus mostly on the stuff created after some wonderful guy gave Lennon LSD. Some of it is just interesting, some of it is musically sound, and some of it is absolute crap and marketing.
A vast amount of the music I used to like bores me now, but there are some survivors. And I am long past my rebellious phases. Some of it was actually decent music in the long run.
Time generally weeds out all the shit. For every Beethoven there were 600000 guys fiddling with a piano who managed mild popularity, but later vanished.
Re:Big (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell if you're being pedantic or stupid. I'm leaning toward pedantic asshole at the moment, as you are hyper-technically correct but not actually answering the question which anybody over the age of 5 understood was being asked.
Yes, CDs are "digital" and they are being sold "online." That's not what UnknowingFool was asking, of course. He is correct that this is the first time the Beatles' catalog will be offered online for downloading, legally.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps I just don't like the Beatles enough to think this is a good thing ... but ...
My solution to bands who 'refuse' to be put on iTunes, for any reason?
I don't buy their shit. I won't buy anything from the Beatles or Metallica ever again for that reason, even if they change their minds later.
You guys go cater to their self absorbed temper tantrums and sense of entitlement. I'll pass and buy things from people who actually appreciate my money.
My solution to people having tantrums because some person (or group) isn't doing what they think they should do is to laugh at them.
Seriously, do you have any idea how childish you sound? Somebody doesn't sell their stuff the way you think they should so you accuse them of having a tantrum? Talk about self absorbed...
I can't stand it when people get all pissy about an artist not wanting to break apart their album into individual chunks. I don't care what the artist's reason for this is, if it is valid concern for the artistic integrity of their work (I can see this for the later Beatles albums, though definitely not the early ones) or if they just think that they can make the most bucks off it that way; whining because they won't give it to you the way you demand it is just pathetic. They don't owe you anything. They created it, it is theirs to do with as they see fit - the only ones exhibiting a ridiculous sense of entitlement are the ones demanding that artists offer their work in a specific way because those artists somehow owe it to the consumer. Stunning hypocrisy and failure to think.
Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they would put out the box sets, more specifically, the MONO remastered box set they did a year or two ago...and put on iTunes in a lossless format, for a reasonable price.
I'd buy them.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the laws allow corporate renumeration still for 40-year-old tunes is almost warrant enough to disregard copyright. We'll likely see it on blueray and the next format and the next. As is it's already seen 7 format releases: Album (78/45/33), 8-Track, Tape, CD, Album (vinyl-again), Rock-Band, MP3s
There are many bands who have excessive catalogs of music - that I just can't be bothered to wade thru. Any band that's survived 20 years has had their label push numerous "Best of" compilations. The same songs will appear again and again, yet each time there will be one or two new tracks.
Perhaps it's just me but considering all that, older CDs/Music are valued (by the owners/distributors) far too highly. If there were offers of "Buy this (new) Album get 1/2/3 previous albums for free, I would think many people including myself would purchase a lot more music.
I certainly can't afford to buy all the music I would want, so instead I buy a handful of albums a year.
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you don't already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There were no downloads then, and LPs are far superior to any lossily compressed music.
Yeah, that's the popular meme. But of course the process of making LPs is lossy, as is recording to magnetic tape. When the music was remastered in the 80s, they tried to boost the low gain frequency bands, which annoyed the LP listeners who like the "warm" sound you get without high frequencies.. But you can always fix that digitally if you want. With appropriate band cuts, and addition of some hiss and pop, you too can make a CD sound like an LP. You might have to add some more band modification and some 60Hz hum to model that 1970s era amplifier and speakers. I'll be surprised if you could tell "lossy" 256kbps MP3 from the CD.
Re:Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a stereo where you can hear the difference my friend.
No, you don't.