Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Negotiations: The Beatles finally on iTunes?

Apple’s iTunes Music Store has come to be the biggest seller of music in the digital age with many of the most popular and influential bands offering their tracks and albums. There are still some notable holdouts that aren’t on the iTunes store including The Beatles. Negotiations have been ongoing to get The Beatles music on iTunes with some of the issues revolving around a legal battle between Apple Inc. (the company behind the Mac and the iTunes store) and Apple Corp. (the holding company that The Beatles set up to manage their music catalog). In February of 2007, the two companies set aside their legal issues and were moving forward with negotiations to bring Beatles music to the iTunes store. Sir Paul McCartney, one of the surviving members of the band, has now come out and said that negotiations to add The Beatles to iTunes have stalled.

McCartney told BBC News, “We’d like to do it. We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand.” EMI was the label behind The Beatles during the bands heyday and owns the tracks. However, the label needs the permission of Apple Corp. to release the band’s music in new formats. A spokesperson from EMI said, “We have been working hard to secure agreement with Apple Corps to make the Beatles’ legendary recording catalogue available to fans in digital form. Unfortunately the various parties involved have been unable to reach agreement but we really hope everyone can make progress soon.” McCartney didn’t comment specifically on what exactly EMI wanted Apple Corp. to agree too that it wasn’t willing to offer. In these sorts of negotiations, the sticking points typically revolve around money.

Source: DailyTech

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