A recent settlement to a trademark dispute between Apple and the Beatles'
company Apple Corps Ltd., has opened the doors for the band to distribute its
catalog of songs through cyberspace retailers such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes store,
George Harrison's window said Friday.
"We just have a few things to work out elsewhere," Olivia Harrison told
Reuters.
She said all the Beatles CDs have been remastered and the organization wants
to get the artwork ready for the physical packages.
Asked if the catalog would be available online by the end of next year, she
said, "Oh God, yeah. Hope so ... I don't know if it would be the end of this
year, but it would be nice. Imminent, let's put it that way.
"I think we're a little bit behind," Harrison added, noting that it was
"ridiculous" that properly remastered CDs of the band's catalog were not yet
available.
"We (the band's members and widows) all agree. It's been done. It's just
trying to now get it out there."
Paul McCartney, who has adopted an aggressive digital marketing strategy for
the release next week of his solo album, "Memory Almost Full," told trade
publication Billboard last month an online deal for the Beatles catalog was
"virtually settled." But he, too, shied away from saying that anything would
happen in the short term.
