Beatles Inching Closer to iTunes?

Reports in the British press have Paul McCartney inking a $400 million deal to put the Fab Four's back catalog on Apple's iTunes music store.

Almost two years ago, Apple (formerly Apple Computer) and the Beatles’ Apple Corps were involved in a long-running trademark dispute over the use of the Apple trademark. (Originally, Apple Computer had made an agreement with Apple Corp that would have kept it out of the music business; a lack of foresight from Apple Corps limited the restriction to physical media, clearing the way for Apple’s iTunes store without infringement.) One result of the very public trademark trial was that former Apple Corps manager Neil Aspinal revealed that Apple Corps was in the process of remastering the Beatles’ entire back catalog for digital distribution. Apple Corps is also known to have approached companies like Apple and Microsoft with offers of high-priced, exclusive windows of opportunity to make the Beatles’ music available for download; obviously, there weren’t any takes because, aside from some limited music instructional material, the Beatles’ music is not legally available via download.

Now the Daily Mail and The Independent are reporting that Sir Paul McCartney has reached a $400 million agreement to bring the Beatles catalog to iTunes “within months.” Neither Apple has officially commented on the reports.

Some industry watchers estimate that key Beatles albums (like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,Revolver, and the White album) could be worth in excess of £200 million, and—if the catalog were released simultaneously—the Beatles could conceivably find themselves occupying a vast swath of the top slots in music sales charts some 38 years after the band officially broke up.

McCartney—who is currently embroiled in an expensive divorce from former model Heather Mills—would receive some of the revenue, as would surviving Beatle Ringo Starr, the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison, as well as record company EMI and Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which controls publishing rights to many of the Beatles’ biggest hits in an arrangement with pop star Michael Jackson, who bought the ATV catalog for $47 million in 1985.