subject: The Beatles Have Finally Made It On To iTunes [print this page] The Beatles Have Finally Made It On To iTunes
Since the iTunes platform has been out on the market, a lot of people have fallen in love with it since it has made their listening experience more convenient and enjoyable. Many consider iTunes the best compilation of music in existence. It could have dominated the media center to an even greater extent but for one thing, you could not find any Beatle song in their inventory. Until recently, the Beatles were completely absent from the iTunes lineup; this was due to the clash between the two "apples": Apple and Apple Corps, which began in the sixties, decades before the iTunes was even manufactured for commercial use. In November of 2010, an agreement was finally made allowing the Beatles music to be available on iTunes. The Beatles will also be available on internet radio for your listening pleasure. So let's dig deeper into the events of the past 50 years to understand how this happened.
Prior to becoming famous The Beatles were a jazz band performing in the United Kingdom. Their manager, Brian Epstein, started to promote his band to recording companies hoping to get the break in 1962. The band finally signed a contract with Parlophone Records, a small recording company.
It was during this time that the band's drummer, Pete Best, was fired. It was the same year that The Beatles began recording for Parlophone Records. Riding a wave of "Beatlemania", the band toured internationally until 1966; a year later, their manager died. The years that followed paved the way to Apple Corps, the Beatles' own recording company.
Starting in nineteen sixty eight, Apple Corps launched several albums including their self titled album, "The Beatles", sharing revenue and credit with other recording companies. The albums "Yellow Submarine" and "Let it Be" were also released, but this time with nobody else to share credit with. From that point on, while Apple Corps continued to produce albums, it also explored other businesses like music publishing and film production.
Due to unpaid royalties, Apple Corps sued EMI and Capitol Records several times since the seventies. In addition it filed suit against Apple Inc, the computer company, for trademark infringement.
A decade later, an agreement not to meddle with each other's line of business was signed between Apple Corps and Apple Computer. At this time, Apple Computer did not have the technology to allow its users to listen to music radio and records were the sole delivery points for Beatles music. In 1989, Apple computer started developing computers that included a digital music interface. This resulted in Apple Corps to again file suit against Apple Computer, claiming Apple Computer violated the 1981 agreement.
It took until 2007 for both companies to settle their dispute for good, four years after Apple computer created iTunes, which dominated the downloadable music market. This agreement with Apple Corps came as welcome news to The Beatles music lovers who were waiting to gain access to their music via iTunes. The Beatles music can also be listened to via online radio. This highly publicized settlement was long in coming, and thanks to this settlement, we can now obtain The Beatles music on iTunes.
