Reissue of Beatles' albums may help to stem fall in CD sales

EMI HAS shipped five million remastered CD recordings by The Beatles to retail stores as it looks to the band to stem the album format’s decline in the age of the single track download.

Pre-sales indicated that today's re-release of all 13 UK Beatles albums was on track to be "the biggest catalogue reissue ever conducted in the history of the music business", Ernesto Schmitt, head of EMI's global catalogue business, told the Financial Times.

The first 50,000 box sets of mono versions of the recordings have sold out at a price of $269. “That’s a pretty courageous price point at a time when everybody wants music to be free,” Mr Schmitt said.

An online leak, which made the catalogue available online this weekend, appeared not to have dented demand for the CDs, which claimed seven of the top 10 spots on Amazon.com’s US music chart by midday yesterday.

The remastered catalogue, not available online, could relieve a slide in the popularity of CDs, which has dragged US album sales down 14.5 per cent for the year to date, or 31.1 per cent below 2007 levels.

By holding out from online stores such as Apple's iTunes, EMI will ensure that sales of full albums are not undermined by hits such as Hey Judeor Let It Bebeing made available individually.

EMI’s four-year effort to rerelease the catalogue is also a test of efforts by Guy Hands, its owner, to rethink the marketing of physical albums, which remain the industry’s biggest source of revenue.

Strong Beatles sales are critical to Mr Hands, whose Terra Firma private equity group has been forced to take heavy writedowns on the EMI leveraged buyout, agreed in 2007 just as credit markets crashed.

EMI and Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, collaborated on “a very structured process of consumer insight” to identify ways to appeal to different groups of customers, including younger fans, Mr Schmitt said.

The albums feature sleeve designs mimicking the original LPs, historical notes and short video documentaries.

A retail, radio and television marketing blitz for the albums and Beatles Rock Band video game will include distribution via unusual outlets such as US convenience stores and QVC, the home shopping channel. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009