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| Beatles albums that are now accessible to the streaming world. |
- The CD came out in the early 80's, but Beatles albums didn't show up on CD until 1987.
- The iTunes Music Store opened in 2003, but the Beatles didn't sell digital downloads via iTunes until 2010, when they made a deal with Apple.
- You may recall that Apple Inc and Apple Corp have had a history of legal battles for roughly the last 30 years, starting with a lawsuit over trademark infringement. One of the conditions of that settlement was that Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business. Bwahaha!! and we all know how that turned out.
- The Spotify application was launched on October 7th, 2008, and the Beatles are now available there as of December 24th, 2015.
That is a bizarrely consistent 7 year lag in technology!!!!
So whats up with that?
Are the Beatles are a bunch of Luddites? Money-Grubbin whores? Are they trying to protect the sanctity of the most important discography ever created, by not letting any ole person stream it at any ole time from any ole device?
Turns out, most of this lag-time is due to the very complex and litigious history of the Beatles Catalog. Which is probably the most complex and the most litigious of all things. I was going to provide a timeline of that history here, but I gave up.
Here is a short (and informal) version of the complications of the rights to the Beatles catalog:
- The Lennon–McCartney co-authorship.
- there were 4 Beatles.
- who have been associated with many recording companies.
- 2 Beatles are now dead.
- leaving behind many wives and interested parties.
- and many unresolved business complications
- such as Apple Corp, which was a mess.
- Sue Me, Sue You Blues
- the Beatles catalog is highly coveted.
- Micheal Jackson:
- bought the Beatles catalog b/c he could.
- used 1/2 of the Beatles catalog as collateral for loans on risky investments.
- sold 1/2 of the catalog for quick cash.
- then he died.
- copyright right laws are complicated, and have changed a lot in recent decades.
- probably some of the issues are Yoko's fault. right?
- Paul is a little douchey.
- a possible undisclosed exclusive digital monopoly arrangement with iTunes.
- Did I mention that the Beatles catalog is highly coveted, and more popular than Jesus?
But regardless of the long and turn-y path on which it has taken to arrive in streaming form, I am thrilled to have it finally available in such a format! Even though I own basically their whole discography on vinyl and MP3 (**brushes shoulders off**), I was just thinking the other day how nice it would be to be able to get a Beatles fix on a whim. And now we can! Suuuuch an incredible catalog of music, that is now accessible without taking up all of the space on my devices.
Here is something you don't see everyday (and wont ever see again, anywhere else, ever). It is a screenshot showing sub-1,000 playcounts on all of the Beatles top tracks!!! haha !!
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| I took this screenshot on 12/24/2015, the day they were released on Spotify. For frame-of-reference, 4 days later, 12/28/2015, those numbers are all above 2 million. |
Here is the "Spiking Artists" graphic from the main page of Last.fm, giving evidence of that expected spike. But I want to see a graph and some data!!
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| Screenshot of Last.fm 'Spiking Artists' 12/28/2015 |
The catalogs of the post-Beatle solo careers are also all available on Spotify:
Who Date added to Spotify
John Lennon - 10/7/2014
Ringo Starr - unknown
Paul McCartney - unknown [He previously pulled music from Spotify in 2010. and it has been re-added.]
George Harrison - 10/16/15 [full catalog became available. A few songs were previously available.]
Here’s the list of other streaming services that also now have the Beatles:
- Spotify
- Apple Music
- Slacker
- Tidal
- Microsoft’s Groove
- Rhapsody
- Deezer
- Google Play
- Amazon Prime
- Napster
