Why The Beatles Are Still “Nowhere Men” with iTunes
I first want to quickly note how, in terms of practicality, the music industry’s fight to sustain a relevance for the physical product for recorded music in the eyes of the consumer has been a tough sell. People have voted with their dollars (or lack thereof) that, for the average music listener (which is by far the majority of the country), the album art, the liner notes, and the nostalgic feeling of visiting your local record store (or these days, your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy) and buying and unwrapping a new CD or vinyl LP is not where they derive the value from their musical inclinations. Even the “album” as a concept, let alone a “product,” is going by the wayside, amplified by the culture of one-off 99 cent downloads and mix-and-match playlists.
The last decade has produced a sea change in popular culture and in the music industry, and artists have been choosing sides, often aggressively and unapologetically. While some artists have embraced the new forms of distribution and community fostered by the web, others have tried to downplay or ignore its impact, although detractors declaring the “End of the Internet” (uh hum, Prince) are becoming few and far between. One of the biggest grievances within the traditionalist arm of the music community is the destruction of the album format, and no other artist ignites this debate like The Beatles.
If The Beatles had lived through the tumult of file-sharing, digital distribution, massive record label and concert ticket conglomerates, iPods, iTunes, Facebook, MySpace, and the rest of the catalysts of change, I passionately believe they would be leading the way in transforming the industry from what once was and always was into what it’s going to be. I think John would have had a field day with technologies that would allow him a direct channel to speak to and collaborate with millions of fans. I can just imagine John’s Twitter feed. ”Who wants to change the world today?” with hundreds of thousands of instant replies from the band’s legion of fans. It would have really been special.
But just as I believe the band would have embraced the transforming infrastructure of the music industry model, I can only hold out hope that those who have been entrusted with protecting and strengthening The Beatles brand will continue to preserve the past even while still looking into the future, which is why I believe Apple Corps, Yoko and Paul, and the rest of The Beatles’ camp have avoided distributing The Beatles’ albums digitally. As any true Beatles’ fan understands, the sum is greater than the parts when consuming the band’s music. In the case of Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s, and pretty much their entire catalogue, 1+1 truly does equal 3, an equation that does not hold true for the vast majority of artists, even those that consistently put out chart-topping albums. If you’ve ever listened extensively to The Beatles and then purchased one of their Greatest Hits or “Number Ones” mashups, you know what I mean.
The White Album is a great example of the multiplicative effect of a Beatles’ album. Songs like “Yer Blues,” “Glass Onion,” and “Mother Nature’s Son” are great tunes, but what makes them special is how they help both coalesce while simultaneously diversifying the surrounding tracks of The White Album. Do I dare say that, in a world where fans can take a scalpel to an album like Revolver and download only the hits like Eleanor Rigby and Taxman, tracks like “I’m Only Sleeping” and “I Want to Tell You” just might slowly drift into obscurity. And is it crazy to believe that when consumed in isolation, Tomorrow Never Knows suddenly doesn’t sound nearly as mind-bendingly revolutionary?
Keeping The Beatles’ albums sacred must be the top priority for the band’s management. Although I hate the fact that a new generation of listeners might not be exposed to some of the best albums of all time due to their reluctance to distribute them digitally, at the current time, it is not worth devaluing The Beatles’ catalogue.
One Response to “Why The Beatles Are Still “Nowhere Men” with iTunes”
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I really enjoyed this article. One, I really agree that a band like the Beatles would have so jumped on the current media outlets if they had access to them. (Your illustration of John’s ”Who wants to change the world today?” Twitter-feed was spot-on.) But, more than that, you were pointing to a common misconception that people have of older artists… people don’t realize that those artists used all the outlets that were available to them in their time period and for some reason people think that if those same artists were young today they wouldn’t do the same thing now.
As for the current discussion of when the Beatles will go digital. I think the original issues of Apple “stealing” the Beatles corporate name even while promising to never go near the music industry is now not the issue. (I know that was a big issue, but I think that is obviously a distraction from the bigger issue by the Beatles camp at this point.) Though, I fully agree with the significance of their albums and songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” (as an example) getting lost in a world of download-able Beatles music. My simple hope would be that the Beatles would finally join iTunes and would only sell their albums in the album format. Everything that got re-mastered about a year and a half ago would be the only thing offered and you could only buy it as an album and the individual songs are not for sell. This would open up a really interesting debate in the current albums-versus-singles debate in the music industry (it would be interesting to see if other album-loving artists followed suit… it wouldn’t exactly be the first thing in which the Beatles have led the music industry). And, while the albums-versus-singles debate is obviously swinging back to a more 1950′s through mid-1960′s (or, more technically a pre-Beatles era) style of singles-over-albums music sells, it would be really interesting to see what effect that would have on other artists if the Beatles did that and it went well. There are obviously albums on iTunes for which you can only purchase the album and not the individual tracks (I know, for now, most of these albums are in categories like jazz and classical where artists don’t want to sell a 25-minute song for 99-cents so they make you buy the whole album which has only three songs on it, but nonetheless it’s still in the very believable realm of possibility). I know this is basically a far too simplistic approach to solving this issue… but I think is at least a part of protecting their brand, while also more effectively sharing (and continuing to keep relevant) the Beatles brand with each new generation of music fans.