Betalogue

The BBC News web site has an article dated October 14, 2003 that says that The Beatles “see no future online“. Geoff Baker, a Beatles spokesman, is quoted several times as saying, As far as I am concerned, we are doing very well as it is.

In other words, the only reason the Beatles would want to join the online music revolution would be if they were not doing “very well” and needed some extra cash.

Given the personal fortunes of the two remaining members of The Beatles (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr), it is quite puzzling to find that money still appears to be the main driving force behind their music publishing decisions.

Just how rich do these people really need/want to be?

I suppose the real reason behind all their reluctance to embrace the online revolution is that it would “force” them to sell music on a track-per-track basis, and therefore prevent them from forcing people to buy new copies of stuff that they already own in ORDER to obtain the “rarities” that are sprinkled here and there on various compilations. Again, money appears to be the driving factor here.

You’d think that, past a certain level of achievement, such artists would the courage to shift their interests away from pure greed and toward more purely artistic goals. Then again, it might be that people such as Paul McCartney never had much of an artistic fiber to begin with.

I am sure we are all very glad to hear that the Beatles “are doing very well”, but maybe that isn’t the issue here. Ahem.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Wednesday, October 15th, 2003 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.