The digital release was inevitable. The only remaining question was distribution; Apple, Amazon, EMI web site, or some new online upstart. Who would have guessed that the initial digital release of the Beatles catalog would arrive on physical media; a bulbous green USB memory stick that is as ugly as it is useless.
So the music gets put in silicon, the silicon into metal, the metal into plastic, plastic into boxes, boxes into trucks. The trucks are driven to giant brick and mortar buildings, then more trucks take them to smaller brick buildings. So thanks a bunch EMI. We would have loved to welcome you to the 21st century by cleanly zapping Beatle bits from there to here, but instead you hand us music with a carbon footprint as large as the device we use to listen.
Can this even be considered a true digital release? Technically yes, but it’s delivered in a physical enclosure, just like a CD and we already have those.
I have always been perplexed at the hubbub surrounding the eventual digital release of the Beatles catalog. Most fans have the material on CD and many have vinyl (I have both) and have already ripped them to various iDevices. Digital distribution would only bring a new level of purchasing convenience to those filling out their catalog or newly discovering the band … or so we thought.
Anyway, look for this sickly shiny green apple at a grocer near you on December 7, 2009 (Dec 8 in the states.) You know, this probably would have played out very differently, and year ago, had Steve Jobs just come up with a different name for his computer company.
Too true. The Beatles Apple itself has similar feeling as it articulates here, http://blog.beema.com/2009/11/apple-holding-beatles-catalog-speaks-up.html.
This guy is an idiot. Unlike many other groups who charge us the same amount of money and provide nothing but some streaming software code, you actually get a physical object that you can display in your home. The files are DRM free also and you can reinstall the files on as many of your own computers as you wish-or any other’s computer if you wish. Plus we are also provided lossless digital files in the form as flac, not lousy sounding MP3′s. This is a far better value for your money. In terms of ‘convenience’ you can ‘point and click’ your way through Amazon or any other online retailer as well.
Beatles rules!