The Beatles sell 2 million songs, 450,000 albums in first week on iTunes

By on Nov 23, 2010 at 3:35 PM
Retail November 23, 2010

Last Tuesday, years of negotiations between Apple, Inc., Apple Corp and EMI finally culminated in the widely publicized arrival of The Beatles’ catalog in Apple’s iTunes music store. For those involved, the wait was worth it. Apple announced Tuesday that The Beatles sold over 2 million individual songs and over 450,000 albums during the band’s first week on iTunes. “Abbey Road” was the band’s top-selling album, finishing the week at No. 6 overall. “Here Comes the Sun” was the band’s best-selling single.

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  • http://twitter.com/mistercarter7 Mike Gonzalez

    cant believe people still buy like crazy that played-the-hell-out music

  • Steel

    Hmph. So their actually were people out there who wanted Beatles music on their iPods but didn’t already have it.

    • Anonymous

      One review my wife and I read suggest that this person had already purchased the physical box set last year and wanted to add the digital version. My wife and I were sort of confused on why one wouldn’t just import the physical copy. Sure, we rail against piracy and we won’t download or rip anything that we haven’t paid for but if she ever wanted to buy something we already owned again I would be pretty pissed.

      We like Apple and from a service side they always do right by us but I am not so loyal that I will repurchase items just because Apple is offering them.

      To each their own I suppose.

      • http://twitter.com/FrankJL9 Frank lopez

        Yeah! Makes no sense. Some people are just really stupid. Hey somebody have to tap into that market and exploit it.

        Apple knows their shit.

      • Anonymous

        It’s all good business policy. Know your customers needs/wants and deliver. Pretty simple really.

      • pepper

        i agree. i want to know a breakdown of demographics!

        were these people 70+ and just didnt know they could rip it from their old cd’s?

      • Timinator

        Time is money for a lot of folks. Not everyone has the time or the capability (or knowledge) for ripping their CD collection for use on their iPx. So, if someone wants to spend the bucks for another license, so be it. I for one would prefer that over asking their friends for a copy.

      • Anonymous

        Exactly, and we are talking legal purchase, be it from iTunes, Amazon or whomever.

        Love or hate Apple, you have to give their marketing boys credit. The are taking 40 year plus old music, rebranding, selling it, and both Apple’s are making a killing. I guess burying the hatchet worked.

        I also use Apple products, but not only Apple stuff, I don’t follow them blindly. I just get annoyed by the haters and the haters on all the sides. I see little difference in them.

      • Anonymous

        When you rip music you have legally bought for your own personal use that’s not pirating.

  • Anonymous

    Amazing, truly amazing.

    Open new stores
    Sell new products to first time customers
    First time customers become iTunes using customers
    iTunes using customers purchase a lot of digital media
    Open NC Data Center for Online Storage/Streaming/Locker
    Rince and Repeat

    I know a lot of people hate Apple. From a business side though everyone should admire how smart this company is. They not only found a way to eventually delete Microsoft but in the process came up with a plan to eventually be the largest ever corporation on the planet.

    10% market share on the PC side
    3% market share on the cell phone side

    HUGE upside in growth!

    • Goofan (aka Apple Hater)

      They are NOT SMART. They are devil worshipers. If you want the smartest company EVER TO EXIST, then look at Google. To make things even better, Google is a company sponsored by the Lord! And it’s funded to fight the devil (Jobs)

      • Anonymous

        Goofan I know you’re trying to be funny but please don’t be blasphemous and use the Lords name in vein. There are some things you shouldn’t play around with and God is one of them.

    • sirpaul

      They will never “delete’ microsoft. MS is an amazing software company. Apple can’t even get close to matching them. They just build some pretty and well-working gadgets. Great company, but not enough to hurt MS.

  • Anonymous

    Box Set for me. Memory lane

  • http://twitter.com/FrankJL9 Frank lopez

    The people of the world did not have the capability to listen to the beatles up until the day we will all never forget.

    Thank you apple for giving us what did not exist out there since the 60′s.

  • sirpaul

    With a huge ad on iTunes homepages, as well as a full page ad on youtube, one of the most visited websites on the internet, who would be surprised.

    • Anonymous

      I got so tired of seeing them on that page I changed apple from the default.

  • Len

    I would have thought that Beatles fans would have already gotten their physical and digital copies of The Beatles’ music long before this happened. The digital remasters were released not to long ago in both stereo and mono mode.

    Maybe some people are shallow enough to believe that they need to download music through itunes for it to work on their idevices? Or maybe people just like to throw away their money to Apple… strange…

  • Anonymous

    I wonder how much money the Beatles made from this? Any one know what the spilt is of the typcial .99 song download? Apple gets x artists gets x?

    • Anonymous

      In the early days of iTunes it was suggested that Apple got just 4% ($.04) per sale. It has always been suggested that iTunes is a break even business because of that. I would assume Apple profits better than that now though. Maybe 10% but they pay the bills with that too. Who knows, they sell so much though that even if it was 4% the make a lot of money.

      One thing they know for sure, if they sell more hardware they sell more media.

    • Scott

      I believe it’s 70% artist and 30% apple

      • Anonymous

        Not sure it hasn’t gotten to that point. If it has though Apple is killing it. If it isn’t the 70/30 like everything else, it will be eventually.

        Amazing

    • Michael Scrip

      Apple keeps 30 cents and the record label gets 70 cents.

      That gets split between the label, the two remaining Beatles and the estates of the two dead Beatles.

      The Beatles sold $7,850,000 worth of music on iTunes in one week. After Apple gets their cut… the label got $5,495,000

      I would assume the label gets about 60% of that… and I’m sure there are some other percentages that we are forgetting. The remainder gets split 4 ways between the Beatles.

      Each Beatle probably got about $700,000 because of iTunes this week.

      It’s still not a bad day’s work for something they recorded 40 years ago!

      • http://rmbo47.myopenid.com/ rmbo47

        Don’t the Beatles own their own label? If so, they get that other 60% too.

      • Michael Scrip

        Hmmmm.. maybe.

        I get all confused with that whole Apple Corps / EMI stuff….

      • Anonymous

        One would then have to think why they did not get on the Apple bandwagon sooner. $700,000 in one week seems like a lot of money to pass up. Obviously Ringo and Paul do not NEED the money but still…

  • J41872

    What are Beatles?

    • sirpaul

      bugs

  • Norm

    Blahhhh.. DROIDtunes is going to have Beatles on day one.

    • Goofan (aka Apple Hater)

      You tell ‘em Norm! And guess who will be doing the launch for Google???

      That’s right:

      THE FAB 4 THEMSELVES. George and John didn’t die, they were saving themselves for the launch of The Beatles on DroidTUNES… Take that you devil Steve Jobs!

  • http://twitter.com/matokira Matt Thompson

    I got the remasters around the same time as Beatles: Rock Band came out. I assumed everyone else did, too. It would seem that I assumed wrong.

  • serpentor

    These are Apple users we’re talking about. It just feels good for them to give Apple their money – doesn’t really matter what the reason is.

    • Goofan (aka Apple Hater)

      That’s right! Apple users give their money away to Apple.

      You, like I and all the other Goofans (aka Apple Haters) are content with giving our lord savior, Google (and Eric Schmidt) all our personal information and buying patterns. And we know they will protect it and not use it against us.

  • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

    So I presume these are people who either:

    a) did not know how to download it “illegally”
    b) did not know you can buy the album already or did not know how to rip a CD onto their computer

    Because if you like the Beatles, shouldn’t you already have their music by now and given up on the download through iTunes? lol

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/PACMan3000/ Paul A. Chapel

    Another example of the Apple Haters being wrong about something. Let’s look at that list again.

    “The Beatles? No one wants to buy the Beatles on iTunes!”
    “OMG, the iPad is going to flop so bad.”
    “No one will buy Macs in a Recession!”
    “The Droid is going to kill the iPhone. Yay!”
    “The Palm Pre is going to kill the iPhone. Yay!”
    “The Storm is going to kill the iPhone! Yay!”
    “The G1 is going to kill the iPhone! Yay!”
    “The iPhone is going to flop so bad!”
    “The Zune is going to kill the iPod so bad!”
    “The iPod is so lame!”
    “The iMac doesn’t even have a floppy drive! It’s going to flop so bad!”

    Man, that track record isn’t so great. Why do you guys even try?

    • Goofan (aka Apple Hater)

      @Paul Chapel, I am surprised that a man with a last name like yours would be a devil worshiper! What’s WRONG WITH YOU? Why would you worship these monsters at Apple. The fact they have succeeded is because they have literally hypnotized the masses into giving them their money. But, never fear, Google’s here and they will set the world straight. They have hypnotized us to get our information, but because we know they are NOT evil (since they told us and we believed them damn it!), we don’t care… They are here to kill this monster, Apple.

    • http://twitter.com/andrewtplummer Andrew Plummer

      LOL I can’t believe i found the infamous paul on BGR

      …still trolling around.

      Getting banned from engadget not enough from you??

      You guys are going to love him.

      Let the pointless flamewars he tries to start on every possible post begin.

    • Frank Castle

      Here’s a small clue Paul: The things you listed are from FANBOYS. NO fanboy statement is worth anything. My cat’s litter box produces better opinions and statements than any fanboy’s keyboard. You repeating them and saying how wrong they are only makes you a troll-feeder and actually legitimizes their idiotic statements. Trying to ‘best’ those dumb statements is like trying to win an arm wrestling contest with a man with no arms. You’ve got to be dumb as FUCK to even consider it.

      So… how many Beatles songs did YOU buy off iTunes? And the real criticism, if people could get over their fanboy selves, wasn’t that Beatles wouldn’t sell, but that such hype was made over it w/ ‘teaser’ announcements and of the sort. It was the Apple Fanboys that got pissed off at the announcement, thinking it was something more than it was… not the haters.

  • http://www.affordableseofl.com Tampa SEO Specialist

    the are the greatest ever!

  • Anonymous

    wtf

  • http://twitter.com/zblackrider black rider

    These guys are the next Justin Bieber. Hope they do a tour soon.

  • http://rendion.myopenid.com/ render

    To the “we forced you to buy new shit by making your old shit obsolete” club, compare this to CD sales of the Beatles when they came out.

    Its called dwindling market share, dwindling net returns for the artists. Remember these people paid the price of a cup of coffee this go round. Im sure the rights holders are thinking right now – “Thanks Steve!”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1242540176 Mike Mosher

    Isn’t it cheaper on amazon?

    • Vaxick

      It is, but try telling that to Apple fanboys.

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