BootlegZone

Don't think this has been reported yet...

http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2006/04/11/beatles_catalog_to_be_remastered_offered

-lint

Neil says, "It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get the publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc."

Why change now when your doing so good at ad hoc!

Neil, Just change the name to "Ad Hoc Records" lol..it has a good ring to it!




Maybe I can download "Carnival Of Light" from I Tunes someday Yipeee!!!!!! Or the 27 minute "Helter Skelter" Yehaw!!!!! for 4 bucks total horaaaay

These remasters and downloads will be released in time to coincide with a special Beatles anniversary, October 5th, 2012, "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today!"

2012!!!! Damn that is when the Mayan calender stops and some great event is supposed to happen! I thought it was going to mean the end of the world, but I guess it just means Apple is finally releasing something !

" I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters."

He's leaving out George Martin!?


Just what we need is Neil Aspinall Remasters!

50 years, I thought it was 64 years as in "...when I'm sixty-four...".

I don't think G. Martin would be involved with the remastering do you?
I read in an interview about a year or 2 ago, where he was retiring and that his hearing was diminished.

just to make it sound brighter and better and getting proper booklets to go with each of the packages

Of course in old people the high end response of the hearing range is what goes first, so yes Neil brighter would be better especially on a 128kb mp3, and please make the print in the booklets really big so me and old gits like Macca can read it without getting the magnifying glass out....

Maybe Neil is talking about the Beatles Remixers Group 8O

http://www.toupltd.com

Damm, I will most likely be dead by then !!

i dunno guys, any stories from a site people have actually heard of, with a reputation, to back this up? i'll believe it when i see it on a bigger site

Is this what you're seeking for?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=14357

//McKenzie

well the macworld article just points to the starpulse one, but heres 2 others...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=aFXMHi1sm_p8&refer=culture
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=musicNews&storyid=2006-04-13T123427Z_01_L13184248_RTRIDST_0_MUSIC-MEDIA-BEATLES-DC.XML

and 68 other articles on the topic:

http://news.google.com/?ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news%3Fpid%3D10000088%26sid%3DaFXMHi1sm_p8%26refer%3Dculture&hl=en

-todd

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060413/mus ... atles_dc_4
too sounds official now, hopefully they didn't just copy/paste the story, looks like they might have, call me paranoid

Here a new story from UPI today...

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainm ... news/6348/

Looks entirely made up from a Daily Mail article:


"The British press should all be taken down to the Tower and be beheaded" - George Harrison

Here's an update from Apple:

March 8, 2008 -- The Guardian

Beatles songs to go online? Not so, says Apple (Corps)

You'll have to wait a little longer for the Beatles' back catalogue online, says a spokesman - even if another paper says it's imminent.

The Evening Standard splash (as journalists call it; front-page lead as most other folks do) today is "MACCA'S £200m iTUNES PAYDAY" which is remarkable for two things: first, they bothered to put the 'i' of iTunes into lower-case; second, that according to the spokesperson for Apple Corps, which still retains publishing rights to the Beatles' back catalogue, its suggestion that the songs will go online later this year is wrong.

The story says that McCartney "is to release the Beatles back catalogue online - helping pay for his multi-million pound divorce from Heather Mills." Later it says that

The catalogue's online release has been hampered by legal wrangles that have now been settled. The divorce is thought to be the final obstacle. A source close to the musician told the Evening Standard today: "I reckon the Beatles catalogue will go on this year."

OK, well, that would certainly be nice - I've been ringing up Apple Corps since about 2003 asking when the Beatles' catalogue would join pretty much the rest of the world by going online. No date was ever given.

And that remains true, according the Apple Corps spokesperson who I spoke to after seeing the story. "There's no date set," she said. "The story isn't correct. I can't tell you if it's this year or next year or when." (The Standard did call Apple Corps for a response before publishing its story, and decided to go with its own sources.)

So what then are the obstacles to the Beatles catalogue, which would be enormously valuable, and would (as the Standard suggests) probably dominate the download charts for months if not weeks (might they become the first band to have No.1s four decades apart)?

Well, look to the publishing rights. The publishing rights to the Beatles songs are owned jointly by Sony, EMI Publishing and Apple Corps.

Sony has songs online. EMI Publishing has songs online and would love to have more. Apple Corps. doesn't. It is owned by, among others, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Its chief executive since April 2007 is Jeff Jones; he replaced Neil Aspinall - who fought against the Beatles' music being on CD until there was a higher royalty, and wouldn't allow it onto compilation albums.

Jones sounded excited about the job when he took it up:

The multiple opportunities to reach music lovers, both new and old, with the Beatles' spectacular body of work makes this position incredibly challenging and exciting.

Well, OK, excite us then, Mr Jones. It's been kinda lacking just lately. But is it me, or is there no very visible reason for the holdout? And what Beatles tracks (or albums) would you definitely buy that you don't already have?

Update: I put three questions to Apple Corps's PR:
1) Can you confirm if this [the songs going online this year] will happen?
2) Any details on dates?
3) Which online stores? Will it be all of them, or will any be excluded?

And the answer? "No comment." There. Clear as mud, eh?

Regards,
Beatle Bob

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.a ... with-apple

Ars Technica says a deal was just signed. This might be it, folks.

So, what will we see? According to Apsinall, as of the Apple v Apple trial the catalog was being remastered before digital release - and I'd imagine it was very late in the process, considering what's already been remastered in the past years (Yellow Submarine, Anthology, LOVE). This could even include Hollywood Bowl and the Christmas Album, which were heard on LOVE.

I'm going to make a reasonably optimistic guess of all core albums, Past Masters, and Hollywood Bowl totally remastered. LOVE and YS Songtrack in their current states. Maybe a few improvements on Anthology (a better source of the Quarrymen tapes has since leaked) and BBC (they'll rip off Purple Chick instead of Great Dane). Possibly bonus tracks in the form of Talkin' About You and Beautiful Dreamer. No Star Club (of course), likely no new outtakes.

Yellow Submarine, Help!, and AHDN in the iTunes Movie Store. No MMT or Let It Be unless they're way farther ahead in the remastering process than Yoko is letting on. No 5.1 mixes (unless Apple choses this time to roll out yet another proprietary audio codec).[/i]

I wonder if they will be remastered like the Capitol US album boxes, or remixed like the Yellow Submarine soundtrack and Love....or both.

I think I 'd prefer the catalog just o be remastered like to capitol albums but I think they will go for remixes a la YSS

from FoxNews:

Beatles: No iTunes Sale

There is no deal for the music of the Beatles to go to iTunes or be sold anywhere on the Internet for downloading.

I hate to burst everyone’s bubbles, but the story that this would happen sprang like most inaccurate muck from a British tabloid over the weekend. It began with some notion that Paul McCartney on his own could make such a deal. And then, the reasoning was that McCartney did it "because he needs the money for his divorce" from the foul and avaricious Heather Mills.

And then, lemmings around the world subscribed to this lunacy without doing any fact-checking.

Really: Why would a man in the middle of settling a divorce suddenly make a deal that could net him millions? Does that make any sense? Of course not.

So here’s the situation: EMI Music owns the Beatles recordings, not McCartney. It’s EMI's deal to make with iTunes or Amazon or anyone. McCartney can suggest a deal or be enthusiastic, but he has no standing otherwise. EMI does have to comply with certain permissions from the Beatles, or Apple Records, aka McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono jointly.

My sources inside the camp say there have been negotiations with Apple but nothing has come of it. There is no deal, and no deal is on the horizon. If a deal happened, it would be announced by EMI. And the Apple four would have to approve it. Also, a deal with Apple would involve lots of merchandising extras, like a special Beatles iPod, or four.

As it stands, Beatles recordings are available illegally on the Internet; otherwise, you have to buy the Beatles CD for the full price (they are rarely discounted).

It’s actually a pretty good path for the Beatles to take. Not being on a downloading service makes them special and separates them from the crowd. Also, the sound quality on CD is by and large superior, much better than compressed digital.
So, poor Paul. Whatever deal he makes with money-grubbing Mills will have to be settled from existing finances.

There is a theory, by the way, that Heather leaked the story to the Daily Mail so the judge in her case would see that Paul has even more income due him.

I'm hoping that the horrible stereo mixes will be redone like in the Anthology DVD set. Listening to Rubber Soul in headphones makes me nearly tip over with the original panning...

putting the whole Fabs on iTunes hubbub into perspective:

http://popculturesafari.blogspot.com/2008/03/wake-me-up-when-beatles-are-on-itunes.html

Personally I ratherhope the whole back catalogue doesn't end up on i-Tunes because there will no doubt be some extortionate price and a couple of otherwise hard to get tracks (I'm betting Hollywood Bowl LP because we won't get anything unreleased now, will we?) to tempt the serious fan in. And remastering will be rather negated by MP3.

What would tempt me is something akin to the Purple Chick Deluxe editions, with tons of stuff we haven't heard before. Keep dreaming.