There’s the long-awaited announcement this a.m. that the Beatles will release remastered versions of their original UK releases, with Magical Mystery Tour and the Past Masters CDs included to complete the 1960s canon.

Complete release is inserted below. The releases, and a pair of accompanying box sets, will come out in September. The statement from EMI concluded:

Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue.  There is no further information available at this time.

The announcement demonstrates decisively that that the label, the surviving band members, and the estates of Lennon and Harrison think there’s a lot more money to be made with shiny discs than digital ephemera.

It also shows how silly so much of the speculation about the availability of the catalog on iTunes has been.

(Last year, for example, the Daily News in England said that Paul McCartney had “signed a deal” for $400 million to put the songs on iTunes.)

I think these things are true about the Beatles and iTunes:

1. The group’s greatest hits collection 1 eventually sold 11 million copies in the U.S. alone. To the extent that the parties involved are crunching numbers, it seems plain that they believe they are one of those few groups left who can still move physical product and that it would be crazy not to take advantage of it.
2. Hard to see how an official digital release of the catalog will come within a year.
3. But the group isn’t solely motivated by money: If it were, the smart move would be to release the catalog to iTunes … then re-release the remasters terrestrially … and then finally put the remastered tracks on iTunes.
4. But that maybe simply be another example of a corollary to 1), namely that the parties involved just aren’t sophisticated enough to understand how to deal with digital releases. There’s a lot of evidence that some people involved aren’t working with the best information. For example, last year George Martin told Billboard: “I think it’s inevitable that sooner or later the Beatles will be available [i.e., on iTunes], but it’s got to be on their terms, really. I think that’s the essence of it. There’s so much piracy, there’s so much illegal downloading.” In other words, he didn’t seem to know that old-fashioned CDs could be ripped.
5. But the ultimate explanation might just be that those same parties—EMI, the survivors, the estates, the publishing companies—have an awful lot of eccentric personalities involved. Folks like that have a way of creating stasis, just by exasperating the other people in the negotiations.

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The press release:

THE BEATLES’ ENTIRE ORIGINAL RECORDED CATALOGUE REMASTERED BY APPLE CORPS LTD. AND EMI MUSIC FOR WORLDWIDE RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2009 (9-9-09)

London, England – April 7, 2009 – Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are delighted to announce the release of the original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally re-mastered for the first time, for worldwide CD release on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 (9-9-09), the same date as the release of the widely anticipated “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game.  Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. On the same date, two new Beatles boxed CD collections will also be released.

The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.

The collection comprises all 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in the UK, and ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ which became part of The Beatles’ core catalogue when the CDs were first released in 1987. In addition, the collections ‘Past Masters Vol. I and II’ are now combined as one title, for a total of 14 titles over 16 discs.  This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc.  These 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set. 

Within each CD’s new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the ‘Past Masters’ set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.

A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. ‘The Beatles in Mono’ gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on ‘Past Masters’).  As an added bonus, the mono “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD.  These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.

Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue.  There is no further information available at this time.

www.thebeatles.com