Beatles on iTunes

This morning the iTunes teaser ad was replaced by the announcement that The Beatles are now on iTunes.

In many ways, this is big news. The Beatles are, of course, one of the most influential, durable, and best selling of all musical groups. No doubt customers will download millions of Beatles songs and albums from iTunes.

More significantly, this is a long time coming, for two reasons. First, Beatles management has been notoriously cautious about any digital licensing, and their long overdue issue of the remastered catalog occurred only last year. Second, there was a years-long lawsuit between The Beatles Apple Records company and Apple Computer, owner of iTunes, over use of the Apple name and logo.

So, it is significant that The Beatles are now available for digital download. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that it seems a little late and therefore less of a big deal than it would have been a few years ago.