Yes, awesome idea. A majority of people that listen to the beatles are those tha grew up with it. The older generation is where apple and the ipod could market to by having a beatles ipod.

Jackson only owns the publishing rights to the compositions (words and music), not the actual Beatles recordings themselves.

The copyright for the master recording tapes is effectively owned by EMI under license and these can be distributed as the record company sees fit subject to artist approval.

No matter who owns the publishing rights, the on-line store that will get the recordings first is the one that sends Apple Corps the biggest pay cheque.

You wish has been answered. Beatles Ipod's from today on www.apple.com

Umm I have 600+ tracks (about 400 different songs in total) of The Beatles, all different ALBUM recordings, over 2400 megs., not including speech or live recordings (which there are a fuckload of). And even I don't make such arrogant claims like:

"I loaded my 1GB Shuffle with every known recording of the Beatles, it has speeches too... Still had enough for a 400MB of Data Cool!"

Sorry, drew, you don't have anywhere close to "every known recording", fuck you'd be lucky to have a fifth of every KNOWN recording of the Beatles. And who the fuck buys a Shuffle and then gloats on their AWESOME music collection. That's like trying to be a porn star with a 2 inch penis.

Poser Beatles fans everywhere rejoice.

Apple is gonna have to pay alot to AC for the permissions of those songs, and in the meantime AC is in no rush.

An iPod preloaded with all the beatles stuff? Umm that will cost over 1000 dollars... Good idea, too bad it will never happen. Apple will sell it for 400ish with the back having a lazer engraving of the cover of "Hard Day's Night" (the four band members pictures from the nose up together in a square) and the classic "The Beatles" label with the 't' streching. Prolly with some gayist U2iPodish thing like 50 dollars off the complete set which will cost in the area of 500-700 dollars or some mini-set which will have the greatest hits something like 200 songs for 150-200 dollars.

Apple Corps logo? You people are fucking idiots have haven't the slightest clue about either industry.

Paul and Yoko are the biggest apple fans? If John came back from the dead just to buy an iPod, it wouldn't change the fact that none of them own the rights. Not to mention that Jacko and Paul aren't the best of friends.

The best thing that could happen is Jacko selling his stake to Apple Computer to get out of debt and then Apple/Sony pressuring AC to let Apple sell them.

Blogged this back in October after Jobs revealed the U2 iPod, and iPodphoto... and drew it out a little further drawing parallels between Jobs and McCartney's lives and oncological experiences:

For RW: Michael Jackson owns the "publishing rights" only. Holding the publishing rights to songs doesn't really give the rightsholder much "power" over those songs. Jackson couldn't stop the songs form being placed on iTunes, that is not a part of publishing rights. Jackson gets 50% of the profits the songs earn, the other 50% goes to the composer(s).BTW, Sony Corp. paid Michael Jackson $95 million in 1995 to merge ATV with Sony and form Sony/ATV Music Publishing, a 50-50 joint venture, so it's probably more correct to say that Jackson now owns half the rights to the Beatles catalog.

I would think that an Apple iPod with an Apple Records logo on the back would, right now, be a terrible idea. The whole issue is over how they share a name and Apple Records doesn't want Apple Computer infringing on their territory, as they claim it will cause confusion. An iPod with an Apple Records logo seems kind of counter productive, don't you think?

I loaded my 1GB Shuffle with every known recording of the Beatles, it has speeches too... Still had enough for a 400MB of Data Cool!

A final "agreement" between Apple and the Beatles will happen. Steve wasn't really around for the last "agreement" so it kinda sucked... but Paul is a huge Apple Fan so is Yoko... so we'll see it soon.

ma-c-drew

Michael Jackson owns the Beatles Catalog.

IT'S JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE IT HAPPENS. MAYBE IT WILL BEFORE MCCARTNEY'S TOUR THAT STARTS IN SEPTEMBER.

Apple Record's lawsuit against Apple Computer is likely the hold up on this occurring.

I've not heard of the Beatles catalog being on other online music e-retailor's (e-tailor's) sales sites .

Perhaps Apple Records is waiting to see how it may benefit from the outcome of it's lawsuit?

A Beatles iPod with all their music would be the biggest thing to hit the computer/ music industry since the iPod itself. Can you imagine the countdown that would sweep the web waiting for the songs and/or iPod to become avaialable for download or purchase. It would be bigger than the superbowl, especially if it was only available on iTunes.