iTunes gains another Beatles member

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 15 August 2007 12:39

Your IT - Home IT

John Lennon's solo work has arrived at the iTunes Store.

The 'Lennon Legend' and 'Acoustic' collections are available in digital form for the first time, and are accompanied by 'Working Class Hero' and the remastered 'Imagine', 'Milk and Honey', 'Mind Games' and 'Plastic Ono Band' 'Rock 'N' Roll', 'Sometime in New York City', 'Walls and Bridges' albums.

All tracks are offered as unprotected 'iTunes Plus' AAC files priced at $A2.29. Complete albums sell for $A19.99 ($A20.99 for the 19-track compilation 'Working Class Hero').

For the first 30 days, 'Anthology', 'Plastic Ono Band', 'Sometime in New York City', 'Walls and Bridges', 'Milk and Honey','Working Class Hero' are accompanied by videos that otherwise sell for $A3.39.

"John would have loved the fact that his music will now be available in a format suited to a new generation of listeners," said Yoko Ono.

“John Lennon is one of the greatest artists of our time," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We’re thrilled to have his solo catalogue available on the iTunes Store for the first time."

As part of EMI Music’s digital catalogue, the John Lennon solo works will be available in iTunes Plus, offering DRM-free music tracks with high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings—for $A2.29 inc GST per song.

Paul McCartney's recordings (including those with Wings) are already on iTunes along with Ringo Starr's Bad Boy album, but George Harrison's solo repertoire is not represented.