Apple Announces Beatles Collection | Hacker News Reader

Apple Announces Beatles Collection

itunes.apple.com

35 pointsankushnarula44 comments

today's a day I won't forget? The day Apple announced yet another way to buy songs from the world's most popular band?

It's a reference to Beatles's[del][del][del] Paul McCartney's song "Another Day". And this is kind of a big deal as Beatles was one of the last really big top-tier bands that blocked every attempt to distribute their records online. They still cannot be streamed on Spotify but it's just a question of time now.

I feel that many people here don't really appreciate the importance of this. This is really the beginning of the end of the old ways of the music recording industry, and a new music recording industry is emerging right now. Very interesting times indeed for those of us who are working in this field or anyone who loves music.

And yes, it was Apple, not any of the major record labels or consumer electronics companies that has brought us this change.

AC/DC still aren't on the store, and they're still a somewhat active band. And by now, they may be even more relevant than the Beatles, if such a thing is possible.

iTunes is the top music retailer in the world, even before this. This isn't the beginning of the end of the old ways; it's the Beatles catching up with 2003.

The beginning of the end started a while ago. The internet, particularly broadband and mobile connectivity, have revolutionized a variety of industries. News, mail, music, movie rentals.

It seems to me that the Beatles finally caved to reality. Sure, there are "adults" that still buy physical media, but the "kids" haven't been doing that in a high enough volume to sustain the such a distribution model for a few years now.

Of course, it's not a Beatles song. It's a McCartney solo song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Day_%28Paul_McCartney_s...

Good point. I stand corrected.

No worries, it's just amusing because McCartney has all his solo stuff on all the services. So you could already get "Another Day" on Amazon MP3 yesterday:

http://www.amazon.com/Another-Day/dp/B003D5FGBW

I think this is more like the end of the end... The traditional model is dead for many years already.

I was amazed to see someone say yesterday that 3/4ths of music is still sold on CDs. I can't remember the last time I even considered buying a CD.

After building iTunes libraries on multiple computers in a single household, multiple iPhones, iPods, and now an Android phone, I can say that I honestly miss having music on a CD that I could rip/play anywhere and I felt like I really owned it. The old book of CD's actually feels psychologically easier to manage than 4 different iTunes + Amazon mp3 libraries.

Easy to play CDs in the car.

Over two years ago I bought an Alpine head unit for my car that doesn't even take CDs. It has an iPod jack, a USB jack, and an 1/8" audio jack. The day before I installed that was the last day I even considered buying or burning audio CDs.

CD sales still account for a greater proportion of sales than downloads (though likely to change shortly).

I think the end of the end is still some time away. Vinyl has supposedly been dead for some time but they still seem to sell a fair amount of it.

Vinyl's experienced a recent surge due to a retro trend. It might last, or the hipsters might get bored and move on to something else, like quasi-ironic adoption of 8-tracks or cassettes.

There was an increase in vinyl sales in the last couple of years but overall it got to a certain level about a decade back and then plateaued (somewhere around a 5% market share in the UK at least). There is a fashion thing in there but that steady level over a decade suggests something more.

Maybe that's specific to vinyl and other physical media won't see a similar effect but we'll have to see.

Certainly at the prices we see right now CDs are often comparable (sometimes lower) than download prices. All things being equal personally I'll still take the physical item, if only it's because it's a free backup, and I think there are others like me.

Oh come on.

They certainly got a lot of free publicity. This story is on the frontpage of all the Canadian and US newspaper sites I read.

Is Apple starting to 'cry wolf' a bit too much lately? :)

Funnily enough, I already forgot what day it was.

Has Apple ever made a major announcement via website update? I mean, it seemed kind of silly to expect major changes from this...

downvote me to hell, but: booooring!

I was hoping for streaming :(

Gruber was right last night when he pointed out that it was never going to be anything that big else they'd be hosting a full event for it.

It's nice and a nice bit of PR for Apple but nothing more. It's not as if this is music that was unavailable, it's just music that was unavailable on iTunes. It was always going to happen sooner or later.

Worth noting that the dispute dates back to 1978, so it's a big deal for many that it's come to an end; perhaps not for people who aren't interested in buying music they already own, but the achievement's still worth celebrating.

It's hard for Apple to announce anything quietly these days, so I think they've managed it pretty well; a leak to the WSJ, an understated holding page (albeit with a rather bold claim), and a stylish full-screen feature on the homepage.

Anything bolder might have raised even more false hopes of something 'bigger'. Anything more demure and it might have failed to give credit to a quarrel that's lasted over three decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer somehow relevant.

This was blown way out of proportion by the media. Did anyone really think Apple would introduce streaming without Steve Jobs doing a presentation on it?

The media has no vested interest in maintaining skepticism anymore, on any event, in any context.

People keep coming back to the respective sites no matter how many times they blow minor things out of proportion. No matter how many times they construct huge stories around zero facts. No matter how many times they skew things into a false dichotomy to rile up bases. No matter how many times they ignore the important in favor of the soundbite.

So, yeah, of course it was blown out of proportion. They had nothing else easy to write about that would garner half as much attention as veiled promises of magic from Cupertino on an otherwise quiet Monday.

this was blown way out of proportion by apple, too. they had the big, ominous message on their front page, and it wasn't that different of a cryptic message than what they usually post up for other actual product announcements.

Hacker News was a part of that too though. There was a 100+ comment thread speculating what it would be.

Anyone know the technical details? DRM? Remastered recordings? Bitrates? Available in all markets?

i see that Live at the BBC, Anthology, and Yellow Submarine Songtrack (not Soundtrack) are not there. So not quite compleat beatles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#File_format 256kbps .m4a file with an option to convert to an .mp3. For anyone who takes music quality seriously the lack of a lossless option is a big turn off. No DRM on the purchases unless you live in Japan where some albums are covered by DRM.

Will do more research when I get home.

I should have figured as much, but part of me was hoping it was something like the official release of iOS 4.2.

I figured it was November, and we already knew what the features were going to be, so no need for Jobs to give a presentation. I just couldn't figure out what would make it a day I'd never forget. I guess I'm still wondering what about this is something I'd never forget.

Ok, let's assume everyone knows who The Beatles are and will never forget them or their music (and above a certain age that is a more than reasonable assumption).

So the teaser banner said: "Tomorrow is just another day. That you'll never forget."

Post announcement, you can read it as: "Today is just another day that you'll never forget The Beatles."

Which is true (even though it was deceptive... but it was just a teaser banner on a website after all).

That was it? One more thing?

I not sure if they will make alot of money, If i remember right the copyright for the Beatles earliest songs are about to expire, i am wonder if EMI is doing this to squeeze any money out of these song?

The copyright on the original vinyl performances is going to expire, hence the rash of remastering. New works = fresh copyright.

Jesus. I had never realized that.

EMI probably hopes they do. That company's been crapping itself, losing artists, etc. I mean, they lost Queen recently.

I am at a loss for words. Mostly because they are bads ones and I don't like being negative.

Deleted comment

For me at least the iTunes page is still showing the grandiose message "Tomorrow is just another day. That you will never forget." so I don't think this is the announcement. If it is, then someone got the big scoop on the story before the announcement was even made.

Edit: disregard this, I was wrong. I cleared the cache and now I'm seeing the Beatles announcement.

Must be a cached version. The announcement was slated for 15.00 GMT, and it's right on the money.

Ughh...truly I was hoping this wouldn't make it on here.

Well, the announcement post got >100 upvotes, so I think it's appropriate that the follow-up gets to the front page (even if it's anticlimactic).

This still doesn't explain why I haven't been able to add new applications to iTunes Connect for the past few days, until now. They seriously stopped that process for this?

Why the downvotes? This morning after they launched this, you could once again add apps and they'd actually show up in iTunes Connect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com