The Beatles to take on Apple again?

The Beatles not yet part of the digital revolution
The Beatles not yet part of the digital revolution

The much-publicised war between Apple the computer giant and Apple the record label looks set to continue with rumours that an independent online music store purely for Beatles' tracks is in development.

If it happens, the download site will feature just Beatles tunes that have been remastered and will be a direct rival to Apple's iTunes Store, which has so far failed to nab the Fab Four's tunes.

Losing money

Speaking to US music magazine Blender, the son of Beatles' guitarist George Harrison, Dhani Harrison, said about the lack of Beatles tracks available for download: "We're losing money every day. So what do you do? You have to have your own delivery system, or you have to do a good deal with [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs.

"[Jobs] says that a download is worth 99 cents, and we disagree."

The Beatles: Rock Band

Harrison is directly involved in the upcoming videogame The Beatles: Rock Band – which comes out 9 September – a deal that sees the band's music used in a game for the first time.

"We've been working on it for the past two years. This is the first one that is going to be totally, historically accurate. It's been a real headache, but it's been the most enjoyable work I've done in my life," he told journalists recently.

While the game will help bring The Beatles back catalogue to a whole new generation of music listeners, it still doesn't solve the problem of getting the Beatles' back catalogue online.

It does prove that The Beatles are slowly catching up with 21st Century technology, however, and may well mean that Dhani Harrison's "delivery system" is on its way sooner rather than later.

Via MusicRadar

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.