TechThe Beatles, music catalogue, Christmas eve 2015, spotify, Apple music, decline of download rate
Dec 26, 2015 07:50 PM EST
This Christmas eve of this year has come up with another good news for the music fans. The Beatles' catalogue will soon be arriving on streaming services.
According to Digital Trends, Billboard mentioned that the Fab Four, The Beatles will be coming up with their sizable song catalog on streaming sites on this Christmas Eve. However, previously, the music band has been rejecting the music streaming services for years.
Before that, the fans searching up for The Beatles' hits or on any on-demand streaming services never found the original version. Instead, covers made by established and not-so-established artists with the combined efforts of tribute bands with names like The New Beatles, Re Beatles used to serve up.
The specific service or services, who finally agreed to the deal are still not revealed yet. However, streaming sites such as, Spotify and Apple Music is included in the Billboard's unnamed sources "strongly suggest that most, if not all". From Thursday, these streaming services will initiate offering the band's catalog of 10+ studio albums along with the other work.
Having the streaming sites fully loaded with the Beatles' songs, will be a big treat for the music fans. Other than that, this will enable the band to show their music skills and present their hard work to a whole new generation of listeners.
About the streaming sites securing the deal, a Spotify representative said the company "would not comment on that." while Rhapsody also refused to comment, Apple, Tidal, Deezer and Slacker also did not instantly gave their views over the statement, as mentioned by Billboard.
The Beatles has shown too much of the laziness in adopting and adapting to new technology. As it took six years to step on the iTunes Store ground, but during the first week of its arrival, it succeeded in selling around two million songs. Other than that, since its breakup in 1970, the band took 25 years to issue the comprehensive Anthology documentary.
They also remained isolated from the introduction of video games until the band released The Beatles: Rock Band in 2009. Even after The Beatles music was released on CD in 1987, the work was not remastered for 22 years.
Entry of The Beatles on streaming sites has endangered download rates too. Warner Music Group claimed earlier this year that it has generated more income from the streaming royalties than digital download sales. And the king of the download market, Apple itself launched its own streaming music service previously this year, as mentioned by Venture Beat.
However, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the sales of digital downloads were $1.29 billion for the half 2015 while Streaming royalties accounted for $1.02 billion. But for the same period a year ago, downloads declined from $1.32 billion, while the streaming rate was raised from $834 million.
The members of The Beatles have introduced their solo catalogs. But this move will draw the music fans more away from the downloads towards streaming.