Buttmunker

Once their catalog is released on i-Tunes, or whatever digital thing, the bar juke boxes can have Beatles music on them.

As it is now, those old juke boxes are history. Now, they're all Digital, and since Beatles music isn't "digital," there's never any Beatles to select and enjoy while doing boiler-makers.

But soon there will be, and the bars will rejoice!

Dr. DVD

I remember a bar where I used to live that still had CDs and a couple of Beatles albums therein.

RagingBull80

I can wait until I can do some "Wyatting." Revolution 9 anyone?

cungar

The bars will rejoice (??) over playing 40 year old songs everyone's heard a million times? Wow must be a slow week.

The Bus

Bars with good jukeboxes still have them set up with CDs. The digital ones means any idiot can select crap they think is good.

I love going to bars where I don't know any of the music. I was at an Ethiopian bar in Philadelphia and I kept picking music randomly. All the CDs were obvious bootlegs and everything was written in Ge'ez.

Jason

when are the beatles coming to itunes? the best shot this had recently was the 9/9/09 apple event, and nothing happened there.

cungar

I still don't understand the great demand for Beatles on itunes. Don't people know how to rip a CD in 2009?

Gerry P.

I read a rumor that they were negotiating and it might happen by Valentine's Day for some reason.

RagingBull80

That's my question. It's not like it's that much more expensive to just go buy the CD. Then again I've never understood paying for music you download.

Travis McClain

I think what's happened is that, in a lot of suburban and rural places, there simply aren't any convenient places to go buy CD's anymore! Remember, the Beatles are one of those groups whose music is newly discovered by younger fans all the time. I suspect there are quite a lot of younger listeners who are just now getting into their stuff and iTunes is their familiar form of purchasing music. I suggest those in a position to profit from digital sales of their music just be appreciative that there are still people out there who don't share RagingBull80's sentiment about paying for downloaded music.

Buttmunker

It just plain SUCKS that you can't hear Beatles when you're trashed in a bar anymore! Once their music goes Digital, it becomes so! What's the oppression I'm getting here? Doesn't anybody hang out in bars anymore?! Have we all grown up?!?!

Heat

I'm really having trouble picturing a bar owner rejoicing over Beetles music on the jukebox.

RagingBull80

I have paid for every bit of music I have. I go to a store and I pay for an actual tangible product. If I'm paying for something, I want to have something to show for it. I actually believe in paying for music. But I don't agree with digital downloads. It seems like a rip-off to me. If iTunes stuff was priced appropriately I would understand.

Achtung

This point came up in another thread in here somewhere. Whether you're downloading music, or buying on a CD, the format is still digital and the basic product is the same. The only difference is the way you're getting it delivered to your house--one involves going into a store and buying an optical disc, the other involves clicking a button and getting those same digital bits directly onto your magnetic or solid-state hard drive. People just sort of have it in their minds that a CD is tangible whereas cutting out the steps of buying a physical object isn't.

Now I can understand the argument that people want the liner notes and photography that comes with the CD. I just don't think that personally I want it enough to pay extra for it (a lot of my albums from Amazon MP3 are $3.99 to $8.99). Or perhaps if you want to always listen to the very highest, uncompressed quality, which again is nice but not worth the inconvenience of CDs for me (or most other people really, unless they are audiophiles with the best equipment).

Travis McClain

I just wanted to clarify that I didn't mean to imply that your policy of not paying for downloaded music stemmed from a practice of piracy. My point was simply that you, quite clearly, aren't in favor of digital downloads and that the industry ought to be appreciative that there are as many people who are willing to pay as there are.

JasonF

If I buy a song from iTunes, is it a one-download-only thing, or can I go back and re-download it a year from now if I want to? I've had to re-rip CDs after a hard drive crash, and while it was a pain, at least it didn't cost me any money. I'm with RagingBull80 -- if you're getting my money, then I want physical media.

(And like RagingBull80, I have never illegally downloaded any music.)

Supermallet

I agree. Especially with Amazon's deals. There are some albums I would want a physical copy of (The Beatles catalogue certainly falls into that category), but for the vast majority of music I'm fine with digital copies.

As for audiophiles, most of them are buying vinyl, not CDs.

That seems like a pretty weak argument, seeing as how it's very easy to back up music just like any other computer file. I have a 500GB and a 1TB hard drive for backing up my computer and my music especially. With the prices of external hard drives and thumb drives getting so cheap, it's a no brainer.