Free as a bird: Beatles makes its discography available to stream online

Consider it an early Christmas gift for your dad: The Beatles will start streaming online.

Starting tomorrow, the best-selling band of all time’s entire discography — spanning more than two dozen albums — can be heard for on all of the major streaming sites including Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music and even Tidal.

Just in time for the holidays, The Beatles finally join streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

Posted by Digiday on Wednesday, December 23, 2015

And, unlike Taylor Swift, Universal Music Group is making the Beatles collection available for free on the services that have freemium membership levels. Until now, the only places to listen to the Beatles online was on iTunes for a fee or on YouTube, but the latter doesn’t have everything.

Since revenue from streaming now exceeding downloads, the Beatles couldn’t ignore the tide change if they wanted to distribute their music. The British bands joins other classic rock bands that have belatedly moved their catalog to streaming sites, like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, reports the New York Times.

So, beginning at 12:01 am local time, you can listen to the Beatles in a way they could never have imagined (apologies to John) 50 years ago:

 

https://digiday.com/?p=153450

More in Marketing

Digiday+ Research: Half of marketers say ad spend will grow this year

Marketers have big expectations for ad spend this year — just short of half of marketer pros said they agree advertisers will spend more in 2025.

Will a ‘rebrand’ of the CMO create a better balance between brand and performance marketing?

The hope is that the variation of marketing organization makeup will allow marketers — CMOs or whatever the title may be — to continue to swing the pendulum back to brand.

Fragmentation comes to search advertising as marketers grapple with shifting search behavior

Search ads are changing. Here’s how marketers are preparing for a new search landscape.