An American-based Web site caused controversy when it started selling the whole of The Beatles back catalog last week. BlueBeat allowed free streaming of all the tracks and albums and sold all the tracks and albums for a pittance of what they’d actually be worth through iTunes or a similar service.

The real kicker of course is that The Beatles through Apple Corps, and EMI, which owns the recordings, have never agreed to sell any of the band’s tracks online. The nearest they’ve come is licensing the tracks for use in The Beatles: Rock Band.

One of the biggest injustices in the British music scene right now is that The Beatles back catalog isn’t available to download or stream from legal sources. There are other bands who have also insisted their music remains exclusive to physical formats but The Beatles are the biggest name to have insisted on it.

It’s been rumored that The Beatles would be coming to iTunes soon for the last two years or so, ever since Apple (makers of the Mac and iPhone) and Apple Corps. (the company set up by The Beatles in the 1960s) settled a legal dispute over their …read more

This week is a big one for The Beatles, with the re-release of all 12 of their studio albums plus Magical Mystery Tour, and the release of The Beatles: Rock Band. It’s fair to say that The Beatles are back in a big way, hopefully being discovered by a new generation as a result.

There is, however, one thing missing from this resurgence of The Beatles: a way of legally downloading their back catalog. The Beatles have so far refused all requests to put their albums online, rejecting selling them on Apple iTunes, and streaming them on services such as Spotify.

You can tell when all is not well with Oasis because I write about them a hell of a lot more than usual. I like to call this ‘Amy Winehouse syndrome’, where the more messed up an artist is the more column inches they warrant. Which is a sad state of affairs really but people would rather read about things going wrong than them going right these days, and who am I to deny people what they want? No one, exactly.

In the last few months we’ve seen Oasis have a big bust-up on tour, with Noel and Liam Gallagher seeming …read more

Estelle was riding high in the US charts with her album Shine, and the best-selling single from it, American Boy, and her career seemed to be heading in just one direction: up. Then her record company, Warner Music, decided to remove her material from Apple iTunes, and it’s all gone horribly wrong.
The short-sightedness of record companies continues to astound me. They are wholly failing to embrace the Internet and the related technologies that are changing the face of music distribution. This unwillingness to evolve is now affecting one British artist directly and unequivocally.
American Boy has been a huge hit all …read more

The members of the Rolling Stones may all be in their sixties, but they are still one of the most commercially-viable bands around at the moment. Which makes their defection from EMI to Universal a big blow to the former, and a massive boost to the latter.
The Rolling Stones have become the third big British act to leave EMI in the last year, following fellow sixties artist Paul McCartney, and alternative indie rockers Radiohead out of the door. The Rolling Stones have moved to the Universal Music Group, the biggest record label in the world, and have signed a deal …read more

It’s a long way from being a contestant on a Simon Cowell produced reality show to becoming a number one artist on the US Billboard charts, but that is exactly what Leona Lewis has achieved, and oh, how she deserves her success.
Lewis, from Hackney, in East London, entered The X-Factor competition in 2006, and instantly blew the judges away with her beautiful voice, and subtle way of changing classic songs and making them her own.
She went on to beat Ray Quinn in the final, and what a good result that has turned out to be.
Bleeding Love has already topped …read more

Ah The Beatles, they were great weren’t they? Probably the best band in the world ever, and the inspiration for a ton of music which has come and gone since.
So you’d think life would be pretty sweet for the former members of the group, well Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at least, seeing as the other two are dead and all.

But it seems only one of the two is happy to be a former Beatle right now, and with all the gossip swilling around at the moment, it’s probably not the one you think it is.

Led Zeppelin have finally decided to join the 21st Century and are to make their full back catalogue available online for the first time.
The band’s albums have been unavailable to download until now, but come November 13th, fans will be able to download the whole lot from services such as iTunes.

Like The Beatles, the legendary British rock band have not previously agreed to allow their music to be made available for digital purchase, but since they’ve reformed for their one off gig at the London 02 Arena next month, they’ve changed that decision.