CrunchGear

this isn’t exactly a big leap considering half the music stuff Jobs showed on the iPhone at the keynote was Beatles.

This is such a non story. Anyone can take the Beatles CDs that they already own and download them onto their ipods right now! Why this is big news at all absolutely astounds me. Do people actually not know how to run their computers? Also, the sound quality on MP3s is compressed and does not sound as good as a CD or a vinyl LP.

Excuse me, I meant to write: “The sound quality on an MP3 is compressed and does not sound as good as a CD or a vinyl LP.

The big deal is that these will be remastered. The current Beatles CDs are trash compared to vinyl. They did a very poor job when they released the CDs back in the 80’s. An mp3/aac of these remastered Beatles tracks will be superior to any Beatles CD currently available. And Apple will have exclusivity for the tracks for 3 months at least (if the rumors are to be believed). The remastered CDs will then be issued later. Then of course the new CDs will be of better quality than the digital downloads from iTunes. But until then, Apple will have a temporary monopoly on the highest quality Beatles tracks available to the average consumer.

jobs has repeatedly used beatles images, music, examples when demoing apple products.

i wrote about why beatles won’t use itunes or even drm here:
Why The Beatles Won’t Use iTunes, Existing Record Contracts or DRM
http://worshiptheglitch.com/2006/05/why-beatles-wont-use-itunes-existing.html

Pat,

I disagree. I think that the sound quality on the 1987 CDs are far superior to the sound on any of the newer Beatle releases. I don’t care for the remastering on “1″, “Yellow Submarine Songtracks”, “Let It Be …Naked ” or “The Capitol Box Sets.” Modern remastering just isn’t that good. Everything sounds louder, more separated and tinny. Just my taste of course. A lot of people like yourself are excited about this, so I guess I’m happy that it’s happening.

I’ll stick to my Vinyl and old CDs. I don’t want to re-buy my Beatles collection all over again. It’s just to expensive for me.

Enjoy the remasters!

I meant “too expensive.” I hate when I misspell words.

I’d be willing to bet that hardcore Beatle fans will hate any new remasters that come out. Something will not be done to their satisfaction. The packaging won’t be good enough for them or the remixes will not sound how that want them to. They’ll all be livid that the mono Pepper isn’t made available. It will be something. I love the Beatles and the 1987 CDs, however, I’ve noticed that diehard Beatle fanatics are some of the angriest people on the web. Mark my words, there will be heated debates over this subject for years to come. Beatle fetishists will NEVER be happy!

The ‘87 beatles cd’s imported in itunes at apple lossless seems to work for me. I’ve never “heard” any of my dad’s beatles LP’s but until I have some reference I’ll take whatever release sounds closer to the actual vinyls, be it the first CD releases that I own now or MAYBE the remastered versions. I agree with the previous poster, it’ll be way to expensive to have to buy all of them over again (how could I settle on white album $$vs. abbey road$$ vs. sgt. pepper??$$ vs. rubber soul??$$)

The Beatles early tapes from Hamburg are already on iTunes and have been for years! You can already buy “Ain’t She Sweet”, “Cry For a Shadow” and “My Bonnie” along with the all of the other Beatles/Sheridan recordings. “Ain’t She Sweet” (#29) and “My Bonnie (#48) were huge hits at the height of Beatlemania in 1964. These recordings feature the original Beatles drummer Pete Best and are quite good.

It just goes to show you how shoddy the press is today. I have not seen a single article that mentions this fact. Every reporter does absolutely NO research when they write about this subject and all of them have said the exact same thing, “There are No Beatles songs available from the iTunes music store”. This is absolutely false!

Of course, the Parlophone albums are not there, but for the life of me I can’t understand why the Polydor recordings are never mentioned. A simple search of the iTunes music store would ensure more accuracy from any news outlet.

Good Lord, what IMPORTANT stuff are they missing if they can’t even get an innocuous Beatles story written correctly?!!!!?

As it happens, I’ve just recently purchased a portable turntable, so naturally the first LPs I had to grab were Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s, Abbey Road, Revolver. These are my absolute favorite albums, so I have a degree of experience and affection for them.

My first “experience” - and I mean that in the full ’60s psychedelic sense - with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl was beyond astonishing. It was transcendent. Like falling in love for the first time all over again, or seeing the face of God. The leap in quality from the CD is probably the biggest shock for me. It’s almost like going from mono sound to stereo. I never guessed that the CD versions have missed so much sound.

And this is essential for Sgt. Pepper’s, which is loaded with little snippets and fragments buried in the mix. The influence from Pet Sounds is far more apparant and obvious. There’s so much more life, so much more warmth, on the vinyl record. And, of course, it goes without saying that it’s a great feeling to hold that large album cover in your hands. Album covers have been greatly diminished in the age of compact disc, and the evolution into pure digital music - computers and iPods - may make album covers disappear entirely.

Perhaps this is one reason why more of the younger generation are turning to vinyl. It really is a superior medium for sound, at least as far as the old analog recordings are concerned. We’ve lost something vital by turning everything into zeros and ones. There’s more to life than this. There’s something dangerously wrong with the world today. We’ve become so mechanized that we’re believing that we’re nothing more than soulless machines ourselves.

I hold out hope for the younger kids. These things go in cycles.

I would expect to see properly mastered Beatles albums sometime soon, a 40th anniversary event. And, cough, another chance to make us pay yet more money for the same thing. Cough. I’ll hope that they’d do as good a job as the brilliant Dylan CD remasters in 2003, which were a tremendous leap in quality over, again, earlier CDs that were poor.

Of course, I should also say that the new Dylan CD’s are still no match for the original vinyls. They come very close, but there are inherent limitations with digital that cannot be overcome.

So, anyway, my advice to everyone is, simply, sit down with a pair of headphones and listen to The Beatles on vinyl. Especially Sgt. Pepper’s. It’s an absolutely crucial milestone. The albums are still being manufactured, so you can buy them new. Good luck and happy record hunting!

Daniel,
Let’s hope that the Beatles catalogue is never remastered! That would be a travesty. The 1987 CDs sound just like the original albums and blow the socks off of the newer releases such as 1, LET IT BE …NAKED, YELLOW SUBMARINE SONGTRACKS and the horribly sounding CAPITOL BOX SETS. When we all bought the Beatles CDs back in 1987 we were told that this was the state of the art in sound quality and would last a lifetime. Well, they made a product so good that it never wears out. My Beatles’ CD collection sounds as good today as the first time I played it. This idea of downloads and re-remastered CDs is just another ploy to get everyone to re-buy music they already own for no good reason. Plus it’s bad for the environment. The world doesn’t NEED to keep buying the same stuff over and over again.

I can’t wait to download my 15 all time favorite Beatles’ songs! I still can’t figure out how to put a CD in the CD tray of my computer. I’m just not tech savvy. I’m sure glad that iTunes will be charging me for music I already own.

1) Revolution 9
2) What’s The New Mary Jane
3) Wild Honey Pie
4) You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
6) Christmastime Is Here Again
7) If You’ve Got Troubles
6) You’ll Be Mine
7) The Sheik Of Araby
8) Do You Want To Know A Secret
9) Mr. Moonlight
10) Octopus’s Garden
11) Free As A Bird
12) Real Love
13) Cayenne
14) You’ll Be Mine
15) In Spite Of All The Danger

I still believe that they did an extremely poor job with the CD remastering in the 80’s. I totally agree with Daniel that vinyl is much superior, and I am hoping the remasters will finally be fixed to be closer to how they were meant to sound. Geoff Emerick, the groundbreaking engineer on many Beatles albums had this to say about the CD’s mastered in the 80’s. “They’re atrocious. I can’t even listen to them because I know what they should sound like.” I totally agree. I know everybody has different tastes in sound. But reading that quote made me more confident that my opinion is “right” :-)

I don’t think that Geoff Emerick knows what he is talking about. He never thought that they were atrocious sounding back in the 80s. If the Beatles CDs sound so horrible, why haven’t they been re-remastered by now. I don’t think that George Martin, Paul, Ringo, Yoko and the late George Harrison would allow their music to be released in inferior sound quality. After all, they have complete control over what gets released. If they did not like the way they sounded they would not have approved them and let them remain in circulation all of these years.

I just wanted to say that The Beatles Capitol albums are actually better than the 87 cd’s which was released with original English mixes which sound bland anyway. Back in the 60’s Capitol took the original english mixes and remixed them by adding echo etc etc which give it a crisper sound. The capitol albums cd box set actually introduces the Beatles for the first time on cd in Stereo

Actually, even better sounding than the 87 CDs or the Capitol albums are the Decca audition tapes and the Beatles recordings featuring Tony Sheridan! These songs are available on the CDs “Antholgy 1″ and “Beatles Bop-Hamburg Days.” The Beatles always sounded their greatest when Pete Best was playing on drums. The biggest mistake the Beatles ever made was to sack Pete. He was an amazing drummer and helped give them a terrific sound. They never quite sounded the same with Ringo. Imagine how much better “Revolver”, “Pepper” and the “White Album” would have sounded with Pete’s “atomic beat?”

“Ain’t She Sweet”, “My Bonnie”, “Cry For A Shadow”, “Love Of The Loved”, “Besame Mucho”, “Hello Little Girl”, “The Saints”, “Sweet Georgia Brown”, “Searchin” and “The Sheaik Of Araby” are some of the best tracks the Beatles ever recorded. I even enjoy the Beatles/ Pete Best version of “Love Me Do” over Ringos. Pete does go out of time on that one, but in a very interesting and experimental way. He was pushing the envelope. The man was absolutely brilliant.

Oops! I meant to type “The Sheik Of Araby.” Sorry.

I think the Beatles CD’s are in dire need a remastering job. I mean it’s been 20 years. I was pretty impressed with the sound quality of the LOVE album and I’m looking forward to hearing that kind of sound on the integral Beatles albums. Vinyl albums do have a special sound but don’t forget they wear out and take up a lot of room.

However I would not download this stuff from ITunes. There’s definitely a sound deficiency compared to regular CDs. Be patient….