The Beatles have had the spotlight on them even more than usual over the last week. Firstly you have Apple coming out with what was promised to be a very special announcement. Now we’re used to the iPad or iPhone 4 given a first outing as fanboys say “oooo” and “ahhh”….me amoung them. So when it came out that the special announcement was that The Beatles would be on iTunes, most people seemed to say “meh” – while the press, equally feeling a bit duped, decided to keep the rouse up by giving it huge coverage. For most it’s just a mild inconvenience that you can’t get it on iTunes…but you can buy the album and upload it. In fact most of us have.
At the same time they had a money can’t buy advert on ITV as the X Factor contestants sang their songs. Well…except Cher who sang “Imagine” which was definitely a break from The Beatles, and The Hippy Hippy Shake was really a Chan Romero song. Technicalities aside though they got a 10 million strong audience watching.
So why is the Blue album and Red greatest hits album lying in the thirties in the charts, while only one single has broken into the Top 40….just. Two reasons really. Loads of us already have copies lying around – Apple needs to remember we can get music elsewhere. Secondly…money! We aint paying over £15 for an album that’s over 40 years old. Think about it guys.
Picture Courtesy of Rodrigo_Amorim on Flickr
Jim
November 23, 2010
“We aint paying over £15 for an album that’s over 40 years old. Think about that folks.” So how do the Beatles feel about the beatles being on i tunes. Ringo had this to say, “the best thing about it is, now I dont have to listen to people say, when are you going on i tunes”. The fact is, they could care less. While artists have been cherry picked to death over the years on itunes, selling one, two or three song titles from an album for a pound or so each or a dollar or so in the USA, The Beatles have been selling tens of millions of full albums retail worldwide. In the last year they sold nearly 4 million remasters in the USA alone (misleading as boxsets are counted as only 1 unit in usa) or nearly 14 million remasters worldwide. In the decade prior to this past year, in the USA they outsold EVERY artist xcept Eminem, selling 30 million units to his 32 million units in the USA- his catalog being on i tunes and theirs NOT. For that decade, their world wide sales totaled over 55 million “full albums” without the benefit of i tunes. Your comment “We aint paying over £15 for an album that’s over 40 years old”, makes complete sense. After all, why would our youth wanna pay good money to download crap like Yesterday, Hey Jude, Something, In My Life or Abbey Road when they can buy current classics like Cee Lo Greens F**k You, currently at the top of the itunes charts.