Fab Four go online as Apple war finally ends

An imminent out-of- court settlement, which began as a squabble over trademark infringement, will have the huge side effect of finally legitimising digital music, writes Brian Boyd.

The future's bright, the future's digital has been the catchcall for many a year as people slowly realised that the changed technological environment was affecting how music was consumed. But this fab new digital world was always going to be incomplete, thanks to a number of heavy-hitting electronic refuseniks who would have nothing to do with this newfangled Internet thing.

Search all you like, but you will never find anything by Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Radiohead or The Beatles on any of the digital sites. Go to the illegal sites and you could download their entire back catalogues - but we're not supposed to be doing that any more, and we can be thrown into prison for even thinking about it, apparently. All four bands believe that the integrity of their albums would be undermined by breaking them up as single song sales.

There used to be more members of this exclusive gang, but over the past few months both The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty have relented and offered their music up to RealNetworks and Napster, respectively - if only for a limited period of time.

With respect to the other hold- outs, The Beatles remain the biggest prize. You could talk up this new service as much as you want, but if you're still without one of the most important bands of all time, there's always going to be something missing.

"Digital music simply isn't complete without The Beatles. This is huge," says Paul Resnikoff, editor of the Digital Music News Web Site. "Nothing is bigger than The Beatles catalogue."

This great leap forward will likely come about because of corporate lawyers haggling over how best to get their way out of an expensively long-running court case. You'll recall that Apple (The Beatles' management company) and Apple Computers have long been throwing writs at each other. It all began in 1976, when George Harrison saw a newspaper ad for a new computer company called Apple. The first of many trademark lawsuits followed and the deal was that Apple Computers could use the name if it stayed well away from anything to do with music.

That was fine until digital music became a reality. What prompted this latest court case was the sheer ubiquity of Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes online store. Because it had signed a document promising to stay away from the music world, the company faced a huge settlement figure at the conclusion of the current case. It is understood that a deal has been brokered and that The Beatles will allow their entire catalogue to go onto iTunes for a truly massive amount of money.

Apple Computers will apparently pay that massive amount because it figures that if The Beatles have already sold a staggering 167 million vinyl and CD albums in the US alone, then the iTune/iPod generation will pay for the band's music all over again. One of the other refuseniks, Led Zeppelin, have sold 107 million albums in the US alone, so when/if they finally relent, their deal should be of a similar size.

As things stand, only one of the top four selling artists ever in the US (Elvis Presley) has his music sold digitally. In addition to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Garth Brooks (No 4) also refuses to sell electronically. Small mercies and all of that.

Not everyone is happy with this likely outcome. ITunes has a Clear Channel-like domination of the digital music world with a 70 per cent or so market share. The deal with The Beatles will be an exclusive one which, apart from the revenue stream it will generate, will give the company even more bragging rights than it currently possesses.

The interesting thing to watch, as both companies' PR machines go into overdrive to announce this "settlement", is who is portrayed as the winner and who the loser.

bboyd@irish-times.ie