Well its official, The Beatles, the “most influential and popular band of ALL TIME” at least IMHO have signed up with iTunes. Only about 9 years in the making but it’s an interesting story.
I’ll keep it short as best I can – but it’s a very interesting story at that and a lesson in the law, justice and injustice and the music business!
First The Beatles stormed on to the scene but rest assure not without having paid their due and then some several times over. One could easily say that they were one of, if not THE MOST, hard working band ever. They had slugged it out playing hours upon hours a day just rehearsing and then show after show. While in Germany, they played so many gigs it’s just not even possible to do that anymore. No place would have a band play every show, and many shows per day/night. But the Beatles did it and honed their chops and skills to set the stage for when they went in the studio with George Martin to make some of the greatest music ever recorded. And all on a 4 track machine at first. And it’s important to note that had the Beatles NOT hooked up with Mr. Martin they would have been a very different band indeed. Have you ever really listened to Paul McCartney’s bass playing? He’s playing ORCHESTRAL notes and not just riding the chord structure – sounds to me as if he learned a thing or two about how to weave a counter-melody into a basic 1, 4, 5 rock song! But I digress – as I’m a HUGE BEATLES fan!
The Beatles ended up with APPLE RECORDS the label which they put out a LOT of records and sold untold numbers and their LOGO for that label was almost IDENTICAL to the Macintosh Computer logo. Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve read much about the FIRST lawsuit the Beatles filed suit against the APPLE Computer and/or Steve Jobs and I’m sure Et Al. As the Beatles rightly felt that this mark infringed upon the APPLE RECORDS Mark and since computers could play MUSIC it was the right thing to do.
But this is where it gets sticky – a registered and trademarked logo – albeit it words, graphics, or both are set up to protect and/or cover a Trademark for a certain class of goods. Hence you can’t have a company that does something similar with a similar logo putting out the same goods and/or services. And here’s a tidbit about TM that most people don’t know. Trademark is NOT designed to protect the owner of the mark – e.g. Coca-Cola (THE most protected ® in the world!) Trademark is designed to protect the consumer so that they will know the ORIGIN of the goods or services and not be hoodwinked into buying an inferior product or service or to just plain cause confusion in the Marketplace. So would the APPLE COMPUTER being pushed out by Steve Jobs and his company cause confusion as to the origin of the GOOD – i.e. The Macintosh Personal Computer?? Well there’s no way to tell without testing it via the courts, you can’t just take a poll and see if the consumer can’t tell the difference and Intellectual Property Law is a very, very difficult area of the law. So who’s going to win? Usually the company with the MOST money – not fair, but that’s the law! How much justice can you afford? So Apple Computers had enough money to stave off the BEATLES in the court system long enough so that the parties settled and a HUGE STIPULATION in the settlement was the APPLE COMPUTERS would NEVER get into MUSIC. So that was the agreement – APPLE Computer would NEVER get into the music business or have any dealings with MUSIC (but then again, I’m sure there were parts of the agreement that could not have predicted the future as we know it now!)
Around 10 year later, here comes the iPod and we all know that music was being played on computers and is pretty much the norm and we also know that music was being traded around the Internet without people paying for it – and this was a HUGE loss to the Beatles as writers even though Michael Jackson had truly taken advantage of Paul McCartney and Lennon’s estate as well as George and Ringo when HE bought up their publishing. Also keep in mind that the publishing was not set up so that each Beatle kept a part of the writers share and that could have been the small chink in the armor of the BEATLES catalogue that made a huge difference – but that’s a completely different discussion altogether.
So Apple Computers was not supposed to sell music – well then comes iTunes so the Beatles take them back to court – and in what I think is a MAJOR injustice – LOST! But I’m always going to take the side of the CREATIVE and the CREATORS of copyrights! I’m very aware the Steve Jobs is a brilliant man and is EXTERMELY creative but there’s NOT a chance that he could ever be as good at music as the BEATLES – or could he?
Well I don’t think that if Steve agreed not to get into music – morally he should not have – but legally he got away with it! And to me that’s a MAJOR INJUSTICE but the courts didn’t see it that way – and isn’t that pretty much the norm? The law (both the legislative and the judicial branches) will never be able to keep pace with technology! So the Beatles lost and now with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and thousands upon thousands of ways for people to have the Beatles music on these devices they can now buy the Beatles music from iTunes! And it only took about 9 years of the Beatles catalogue for SR copyrights to hold out until all of the surviving members and the estates of Lennon and Harrison to finally agree to let Steve Jobs sell their songs via iTunes.
In the end one can’t be sure just how much music of the Beatles will be sold via iTunes as most of the true fans of the Beatles already have all of the Beatles music in digital format and the TRUE FANS have it all on vinyl and won’t stand for the 320 Kpbs mp3 versions! But there’s a whole new generation of kids out there that have yet to experience the British Invasion so I’m sure there will be millions sold but I still think that this whole story should not have to be told! But welcome to the music business – the MOST POWERFUL BAND of ALL TIME were totally messed over by MJ and now SJ and there wasn’t much they could do about but spend millions of dollars that they WASTED only to LOSE something that they should have been able to capitalize on for the life of their copyrights and for as long as APPLE RECORDS was in business!
So in the end, who is more powerful the musicians or the business man who peddles hardware and/or a delivery device for people to BUY the music? You decide as you already know the outcome! It’s a sad state of affairs that the MUSIC and the people who create it – are usually the ones that lose SOMETHING in the end.
SM @ MSO
