Conflicting reports out of The Beatles’ camp are casting doubt over whether or not the arrival of the band’s newly-remastered back catalog on the iTunes Store will be part of tomorrow’s Apple media event. EMI’s global catalog president Ernesto Schmitt told the Financial Times that “[c]onversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally.
But it’s not tomorrow,” backing up a story from AllThingsD that cited a “source familiar with the band’s plans” claiming no announcement was scheduled for the event. Yoko Ono, however, is believed to have told UK outlet Sky News that the catalog would indeed debut on iTunes during the special event; both the original and Google cache of the article are now gone, while screenshots of the article appearing on Google News and being linked on Twitter are still available at 9 to 5 Mac.
As part of an interview for a special edition of music publication NME, Paul McCartney addressed the iTunes situation, saying that “We were having problems with iTunes – well not iTunes, EMI was the problem – with downloading, which we’d like to do because that’s how a lot of people get their music.” Tomorrow also happens to mark the CD release of the newly-remastered back catalog and the debut of the new The Beatles: Rock Band video game.
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