If you think about the greatest bands ever, the Beatles comes to mind. Sure, they have been broken up for 35 years, two of them have passed on, but their music is forever. There has been recent news that their studio catalog will be open for streaming on many music services, as soon as Christmas Eve.
Billboard reports that music from the Beatles could arrive on streaming services. It isn't the only source to be reporting this, but this does not mean that it is valid. All Access also claims that the Beatles catalog is set to hit streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify on December 24th.
This is a rumor that has been floating around since this summer, but insiders have apparently known about this for a long time, but told to embargo the news until Christmas Eve. Several outlets apparently "jumped the gun" on this one.
It is reported that in January of this year, former Universal Music Group digital executive Rob Wells restarted discussions for this, and papers were signed for it in the middle of September. What specific services have secured this deal, it is not known, but people could stream all of the Beatles' studio albums. In fact, Apple, Tidal, Deezer, Slacker, Spotify, and Rhapsody are without comment on this particular subject.
The Beatles is one of the biggest digital holdouts in the history of the music business. The Beatles didn't even make their catalog available on iTunes until November of 2010. This was a victory for Steve Jobs, who then passed away less than a year later. The Beatles then sold two million songs during its first week.
It seems like the Beatles are really slow when jumping on trends. It makes one wonder why they haven't. It took 25 years to have an Anthology documentary, and Beatles CDs weren't available until 1987, quite late in the game for CD Technology. Then the CDs were not remastered until 22 years later.
In fact, this leads many to wonder why in the world the Beatles are so slow in getting their music into modern-day formats. It also makes one wonder who would be receiving the profits. True, only Paul and Ringo are alive, but something tells me that record companies take the biggest slice of the pie in this regard.
It is also very strange that the timing of the release. No company who is trying to get a product out before the holiday season would release its product on Christmas Eve. One would think that if this deal was made, then part of the deal would be to have some time for promotion and marketing.
We will see if this rumor is fact on the day before Christmas, and honestly, it really should be. The Beatles are one of the biggest bands of all time, and there are generations that might not have even heard of them without music streaming.
