14 DAY TRIAL // When last week, Paul McCartney told Billboard magazine that an agreement with iTunes was 'virtually settled', speculation ran rampart. However, despite the positive news, analysts say that having the entire Beatles catalogue on iTunes will be a non-event.
While it cannot be argued that it is definitely late to be arriving at the digital downloads party, it's better late than never. After years of waiting, it seems unlikely that Beatles fans don't already have the band's albums ripped from CDs by now. Because of this, analysts expect the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes to be uneventful. "Having the Beatles on iTunes is fabulous, but it's a nonevent," according to W.R. Hambrecht & Co. analyst Matthew Kather, who has a buy rating on Apple. "It's not a needle mover," agreed Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research, who also has a buy rating on Apple.
While Apple may not make enough money out of it for analysts to consider this a big deal, for anybody who loves the Beatles, this is fantastic news. Friday, June 1st, is going to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper. That looks like the perfect time for Apple to make the big announcement. If Apple offers a special deal on the entire Beatles digitally remastered catalogue, or even a special edition Beatles iPod that comes preloaded with the catalogue, this could quickly turn into a very big event.
While having the Beatles available on the iTunes Store may not be a huge event in itself, Apple could easily turn it into one. The fact that most fans already have their Beatles music would have little bearing on the matter. Beatles 1, the compilation released on November 13, 2000 sold 3.6 million units in its first week and more than 12 million in three weeks worldwide.