Labels Not Only Dinosaurs

The Beatles refuse to license their music for online sales, with their spokesman saying, “I don’t see any reason for it at all.” This is a very neat statement of the recording industry’s attitude toward the Internet in general until file sharing forced them into the new millennium three years after rest of the world turned the calendar. Self-satisfied smugness may be supportable temporarily when you sit atop the heap, but he who cuts off his nose to spite his face only ends up breathing through his mouth (and stuff).

The BBC reports:

A spokeswoman for publishers EMI told BBC News Online: “The Beatles have chosen not to put their music online.”

“I do not know their reasoning.”

The decision has been taken by the band’s record label Apple Corps, which is owned by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estate of George Harrison.

….Geoff Baker, a spokesman for Apple Corps, told BBC News Online: “We have no plans at the moment to go online.”

When asked why the former band members were not putting the group’s music online, he added: “I do not think there is any reason for it at all.”

The Beatles have been traditionally slow to adopt new music formats and were one of the last big-name artists to put their music on to compact discs.

….Mr Baker said Apple Corps was unaware of any particular demand for the band’s music to go online and was unconcerned by the numbers of Beatles’ tracks being downloaded by so-called pirates for free.

….”As far as I am concerned we are doing very well as it is.”

He said neither of the band members have expressed any interest in online music.

“I have never heard Paul McCartney talking about it,” he said.

The Rolling Stones were also slow to make their back catalogue available online – with the first tracks not accessible until August 2003.

There is no prize for being the last dinosaur into the rowboat.