Yet again the British press, led this time by the Daily Mirror, is saying that the Beatles catalog will be available on iTunes. The Mail said that Paul McCartney had ok’ed the deal, and many other online news outlets, and U.S. sites like Ars Technica and Slashdot, are on the story again.

As with the same rumor two weeks ago, and the ones that have been popping up regularly over the past year, the stories raise more questions than they answer, which of course lead the aggregating sites to go even farther afield.

The Daily Mail story isn’t online for some reason, but the stories that quote it say that Paul McCartney had “signed a deal” worth £200 million, or almost $400 million. That leads Ars Technica to say this:

While McCartney will be keeping much of the money, several other parties stand to benefit from the deal. It is being reported that portions of the sum will be going to families of the deceased members of the Beatles, Ringo Starr, Sony, EMI, and the former owner of the catalog, Michael Jackson.

“Several other parties stand to benefit” is of course something of an understatement, and “McCartney will be keeping much of the money” is entirely wrong. I’m not an expert on the Beatles’ tangled ownership, but an entity that is either EMI or controlled by EMI probably quote-unquote owns the Beatles’ recordings. One would assume that over the decades the Beatles themselves have gained some rights in the matter (like the ability to veto or at least participate in re-release strategies), but I’ve never read that the group got back control of its masters, and even if they did McCartney would be just one vote of three controlling entities. (Or four if they let Ringo have a say.)

McCartney has more of an influence in publishing (i.e., songwriting-rights) issues (or rather he has a say along with the other folks who control those rights, including Yoko Ono, Michael Jackson and Sony). Those parties would presumably get publishing monies from sales, but I don’t think they can stop an iTunes agreement, even if they would want to, which they wouldn’t.

It pains me to say that Roger Friedman has some decent coverage of this:

EMI Music owns the Beatles recordings, not McCartney. It’s EMI’s deal to make with iTunes or Amazon or anyone. McCartney can suggest a deal or be enthusiastic, but he has no standing otherwise. EMI does have to comply with certain permissions from the Beatles, or Apple Records, aka McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono jointly.

On the other hand, he also says this …

As it stands, Beatles recordings are available illegally on the Internet; otherwise, you have to buy the Beatles CD for the full price (they are rarely discounted).

It’s actually a pretty good path for the Beatles to take. Not being on a downloading service makes them special and separates them from the crowd. Also, the sound quality on CD is by and large superior, much better than compressed digital.

… which is much less clear, as Hitsville has written:

The issue: when was the best time is for the Beatles to strike in this market? The argument that the time is long past is that millions of its original albums are being digitized and passed around amongst friends. I don’t even listen to the Beatles anymore, just on the grounds of overfamiliarity. Still, I just took a quick look on my iPod and discovered … nearly 100 Beatles songs on it. I would bet a lot of people are like me, digitizing their own albums (in my case, almost absent-mindedly) or getting them from friends, and absorbing the Beatles into their digital library almost by osmosis. Isn’t the band losing an enormous, unrecoverable, income stream?

You’d think that the Beatles’ organization making a calculated decision on this. Perhaps, in old-school negotiation style, they were trying to drive a harder bargain, or build up demand, but that would seem to be senseless when on every passing day people are digitizing their own CDs and adding them to their iPod collections—and then passing the discs on to friends, who have no other way to get the music onto their iPods.

More here.