The most high-profile streaming service holdouts of all, The Beatles, may finally be coming to Spotify and co.
If you were to name the biggest band of all time, most people with an ounce of sense would say The Beatles without hesitation.
But the remaining members of the Fab Four (and their legal representatives) have been famously reluctant to accept the digitisation of music. It famously took The Beatles six years to arrive on iTunes, back when most people still bought and downloaded MP3 files.
More recently, The Beatles were refusing to appear on music subscription services when Taylor Swift was still playing the game. The result: a whole new generation of would-be fans is being deprived of instant (and legal) access to The Beatles albums.
That could be all set to change on Christmas Eve. Over the weekend, Billboard posted a report claiming that The Beatles will make their music available on streaming services from December 24.
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There have been rumours that a specific yet unidentified service had been negotiating a six month exclusivity period, but the report claims that all of the major services will likely make the entire Beatles catalogue available over the coming days.
Streaming services have just begun to overtake downloads in terms of major label revenue for the first time, so it would appear that That Beatles have once again timed things just right.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
