Mike McGuire

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Mike McGuire
Research VP
11 years at Gartner
21 years IT industry

Mike McGuire guides digital marketers on best practices for developing strategies. He specializes in how context, community, location and time — combined with a consumer’s purchase history and purchase intent — are changing the relationship between consumers and brands …Read Full Bio

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Beatles Finally Get to iTunes

by Mike McGuire  |  November 16, 2010  |  2 Comments

I vowed I would not resort to ‘Long and Winding Road” references to describe the process that led finally to the Beatles catalog being available on iTunes.

What’s it mean to the music industry and to iTunes? For one thing, iTunes chief Eddie Cue can finally check off the “get the Beatles catalog" item on his to-do list. Beyond that, the announcement has more PR value than actual revenue-generating potential. This band’s catalog (of new Beatles songs) effectively stopped growing in 1970, when the band broke up and stopped recording together. (Their respective solo catalogs have generally been available on major online music services.) The catalog has been released on vinyl LPs, cassette tapes, 8-track tapes and CDs.  While new music fans will come to buy a few downloads here and there, young adults are just as likely to raid their parents’ collections of, take your pick, box sets of CDs, tapes or LPs

That said, the iTunes team are masters of repackaging content, and the new Beatles page is really quite nice. Among the new items: a complete copy of the band’s first U.S. concert in 1964 in Washington, D.C.

So now iTunes has the Beatles. Yay!

Everybody get back to work.

2 Comments »

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2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 fresno criminal attorney   November 16, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    This will be the first time that The Beatles popular music has been available in iTunes

  • 2 Raj Akula ( CRM & EMM Consultant)   November 17, 2010 at 12:40 am

    That’s true Mike,I agree with you, finally the two big brands have come together..”The Beatles” and “Apple” ,and I surely believe it is a big win for Apple and blessing for the iTunes followers.