McCartney Talks Beatles Downloads, iTunes, Rock Band

This week is a big one for The Beatles, with the re-release of all 12 of their studio albums plus Magical Mystery Tour, and the release of The Beatles: Rock Band. It’s fair to say that The Beatles are back in a big way, hopefully being discovered by a new generation as a result.

There is, however, one thing missing from this resurgence of The Beatles: a way of legally downloading their back catalog. The Beatles have so far refused all requests to put their albums online, rejecting selling them on Apple iTunes, and streaming them on services such as Spotify.

McCartney spoke about this, as well as the new The Beatles: Rock Band video game in an interview with NME:

“We were having problems with iTunes – well not iTunes, EMI was the problem – with downloading, which we’d like to do because that’s how a lot of people get their music.”

“We’ve kind of bypassed that [download problems] because now you can do it in ‘Rock Band’. I always liked that, when you’re told you can’t do something and suddenly there’s a little route round the back.”

Unfortunately, McCartney seems to be a little ignorant of the fact that not having a legal method for obtaining digital copies of albums means that people are likely to turn to illegal methods instead.

Every Beatles album ever produced has been available on file-sharing Web sites for years, the only difference being that McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison don’t see a penny from it. So, holding out on offering content legally would appear to be a big mistake.

There is speculation that The Beatles back catalog will be available on iTunes soon, with Apple holding a music event this week where a deal could possibly be announced. If not, then people will continue to get hold of the music in other ways instead.

[Photo Source: Newscom]