Every year Apple has a special music event, and every year Beatles rumors follow along with it. This time, the event date of 9/9/9, the release of Beatles Remastered on CD and Beatles Rock Band has the rumors running faster than ever. Will iTunes join the fray, or will Big Music try to make their money on physical media and games before allowing digital downloads?
Current is adding fuel to the fire, however, with a purported screenshot of the Beatles being featured on iTunes — a slip of the old server, so to speak.
But is it real, or just really fake? iTunes ads are easier to whip up on photoshop than lolcats, after all.
As the typical timeframe for Apple’s annual Music Event — focused on iTunes and the iPod — draws close, rumors have once again turned to… the Beatles. Perhaps because no other band seems both as close to Apple founder Steve Jobs’ persona, and yet is still utterly missing from the digital download space.
This year, however, the Beatles do show up on Rock Band, and are releasing newly, digitally, remastered CDs, so will we finally get a Beatles on iTunes announcement this year to cap things off?
Ugh. Who knows? Why even bother to speculate any more, to track possible yellow iPod colors, to monitor McCartney’s California travel plans, to play last year’s Let’s Rock keynote backwards for clues. It’ll happen when it happens.
On the rare occasions when I hit iTunes looking for music, I go immediately to iTunes Plus. When it comes to DRM music, I’m just not gonna do it, so if I can’t find it on iTunes Plus, I can’t find it. Trouble now is, I can’t find iTunes Plus! Used to be in the Quicklinks, but now it’s gone missing from the iTunes Canadian Store. Maybe MacRumors knows:
Forum user Doodledoo has been following it closely and found evidence of tracks from both Warner and Sony studios participating in iTunes Plus. Apple originally launched their DRM-Free iTunes Plus format with the support of only EMI but recent rumors have suggested Apple is working on winning over the other three majors studios (Warner, Sony, Universal).
Whazzat? Really? Could it be that Big Media is finally learning that treating customers to fair use for fair price is the way to go? In a word… “no”. According to Apple Insider, progress and all, the Beatles are still going to need some help:
“EMI want something we’re not prepared to give ‘em. It’s between EMI and The Beatles I think – what else is new?,” McCartney said. “Last word I got back was it’s stalled at the moment. But I really hope it will happen because I think it should.”
So are we finally on the cusp of a revolution? Is (music, at least) DRM dying? And will all of us be long gone before the Beatles show up for download as well?
