Apple Corps and EMI Music have announced a limited edition USB drive containing The Beatles’ back catalogue.
The apple-shaped drives will contain remastered versions of The Beatles’ 14 stereo albums, alongside the 13 short documentary films that were included in the recent CD reissues, as well as artwork, photographs and liner notes.
The 16 GB drives will feature a specially-designed Flash interface. The music will be encoded in both FLAC 24-bit/44.1 kHz and mp3 at 320 kbps.
The drive will go on sale on 7 December (8 December in North America). The Beatles’ official store lists the drives at $279.99 USD or £200 GBP, although Amazon are listing them for less. Only 30,000 will be made available worldwide.
The albums included on the USB drive are:
- Please Please Me
- With The Beatles
- A Hard Day’s Night
- Beatles For Sale
- Help!
- Rubber Soul
- Revolver
- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Magical Mystery Tour
- Yellow Submarine
- The Beatles (White Album)
- Abbey Road
- Let It Be
- Past Masters
Previous efforts to make The Beatles’ back catalogue available as a digital download via Apple Inc’s iTunes Music Store had stalled.
Also on this day...
- 2023: Paul McCartney live: Heritage Bank Stadium, Gold Coast
- 2009: EMI sues BlueBeat.com for selling Beatles downloads
- 2005: Paul McCartney live: Rose Garden, Portland
- 1975: Wings live: Apollo Stadium, Adelaide
- 1974: George Harrison live: Seattle Center Arena, Seattle
- 1974: US single release: Junior’s Farm by Paul McCartney and Wings
- 1968: Yoko Ono is admitted to hospital
- 1966: NEMS leaves 13 Monmouth Street, London
- 1965: Recording: What Goes On, 12-Bar Original
- 1964: The Beatles live: Ritz Cinema, Luton
- 1964: Mixing: I’ll Follow The Sun, Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, Rock And Roll Music, Words Of Love, Mr Moonlight, I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party, I’m A Loser, Baby’s In Black, No Reply, I Feel Fine
- 1964: UK EP release: Extracts From The Film A Hard Day’s Night
- 1963: The Beatles live: Royal Command Performance
- 1962: The Beatles live: Star-Club, Hamburg
- 1961: The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (evening)
- 1960: The Beatles live: Kaiserkeller, Hamburg
Want more? Visit the Beatles history section.
Another way to squeeze us Beatles fans out of our last penny. Congratulations Apple/EMI, on top of leaving me with almost no cash for the rest of the year (either way, it was worth getting all the Beatles CDs), you still insult my intelligence by trying to sell me the same music on a USB stick that wont last me a year…and youre charging me the same as the cds for it…you people are geniuses and us consumers are insanely dumb.
Don’t buy that flash drive. It’s an insult to all fans. If they had released it on 9/9/9, it would have been a nice treat and maybe lots of people would have bought that instead of CDs. But no, they had to wait to the 29th Anniversary of John’s slaying to come up with this. What a shame.
Hmmm, 30,000? We’ll see. I bet EMI pukes them out as long as they will sell. Kinda like the 10,000 mono box sets that sold out and are now into their subsequent pressings.
I didn’t shell out for the stereo versions (and I’m oh so glad). Yes, I will be getting this (and transferring the songs to a larger drive). 24-bit, 44.1 khz, thank you, thank you. Why they didn’t release the remasters on DVD I’ll never understand.
i have the beatles usb , but i can’t down load the last 2 songs off rubber soul to itunes !!! why ??