Posts Tagged ‘Paul McCartney’

Add Paul McCartney to the list of famous artists striking out on their own terms. Slashdot reports that the former Beatle has a side project called The Fireman, and that he just released their new album, Electric Arguments, as an unprotected digital download.

“You can purchase just the digital files, or if you purchase a physical CD or vinyl copy, you are also given access to the digital download,” the report said. “Not only that, but the download is available in 320-kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or even FLAC format. If you’re interested in trying before you buy, you can listen to the entire album in a Flash player on the main page of the site.”

The album can play on any cell phone or MP3 player (including an iPod). That’s in contrast to buying protected music from Napster, Zune Marketplace, etc. which won’t play on the iPhone, or buying protected music from the iTunes Store, which won’t play on any other cell phone.

As the collective tech and media press throws up its arms in utter frustration, Paul McCartney said that negotiations have once again stalled regarding whether or not The Beatles‘ catalog of music will be available in Apple’s iTunes Store, according to Wired.

“That is constantly being talked of, we’d like to do it,” McCartney said in a Billboard interview. “We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it… But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. So the last word I got back was that it had stalled, the whole process. They [EMI] want something we’re not prepared to give them. Hey, sounds like the music business. It’s between EMI and The Beatles. What else is new.”

We’ve been sick of this back-and-forth for a while now; at least since March. At any rate, there it is. Don’t forget; if you want to listen to The Beatles on your iPod or cell phone, you can rip a CD.

(Image credit: Wired)

EMI, the smallest of the four major record labels, posted an after-tax loss in the year to March of $1.2 billion, which is a major increase over the $456 million the company lost during the same period the year before, Wired reports.

This comes after EMI allowed a private equity group run by Guy Hands to buy the historic music company in 2007 and scare off its most legendary artists, the report said, including Radiohead, Paul McCartney, and The Rolling Stones. “That’s not restructuring. That’s getting paid to suck.”

Maltby Capital chairman John Birt said in a statement that he believes EMI has now hit bottom and will do better in upcoming quarters. “He conveniently blamed the previous regime for much of the loss, and explained that the music publishing arm of EMI was doing fine and that revenue actually rose some fiscal quarters,” the article said.

EMI was the first (and, it turns out, the only) major label to offer its downloads DRM-free on Apple’s iTunes Plus service; since then, all four labels now sell these tracks on Amazon MP3, Napster, Rhapsody, Zune, and other online music stores as well. Recently, EMI has been busy signing deals with Nokia, MySpace Music, and others, but is it too little too late?

(Image credit: AP/Remy de la Mauviniere)