The Beatles: Rock Band has now sold more than one million copies, according to the game’s publisher MTV Games.
However, that rosy figure is somewhat undermined by the fact that the company laid off 39 staff at the game’s developer Harmonix yesterday – 13% of its workforce. “This was a process and business decision unrelated to the performance of any MTV Games / Harmonix product,” says a spokesperson.
“The reason for the restructuring is due to better aligning our staffing to best suit our product development plans and schedules moving forward.” They also stress that no future games have been canned as a result of the layoffs. Which is good news for all the rock bands lobbying to get their own Rock Bands. If that makes sense.
EMI has confirmed that it is suing US digital music store BlueBeat for copyright infringement, following news broken by Music Ally last week that it was selling Beatles albums as MP3s without a licence. However, intriguingly, EMI has also announced plans for the first ever legitimate digital distribution of the Beatles back catalogue – via apple-shaped USB drives.
BlueBeat first: EMI confirmed to Wired’s Epicenter blog that it has filed the copyright infringement suit against BlueBeat in a California US district court. The label had previously expressed anger at the news that the Fab Four were being sold online without its permission.
But what about those USB drives. EMI and Apple Corps made the announcement last night, revealing that they will sell 30,000 apple-shaped devices, with the 14 recently-remastered Beatles albums preloaded as FLAC and MP3 files. They go on sale on 7 November in Europe and 8 November in the US, with a price point of £200 in the UK and $279.99 in the US.
Okay, so the only place you’ll find the Fab Four’s recorded output available in digital form is still in The Beatles: Rock Band console game. However, UK streaming music service we7 has secured something of a coup with a playlist of live versions of Beatles tracks performed by Sir Paul McCartney.
The playlist includes Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday, and can be streamed from the we7 website or embedded elsewhere (such as here – see above).
“The Beatles are everywhere today with the release of their newly remastered work and the launch of Beatles Rock Band – but to date, their catalogue has not been made available through any legal online music services,” says CEO Steve Purdham. “we7 listens to what our users want and as a result, we’re giving them the chance to listen to the best line up of classic Beatles tracks sung by Sir Paul himself. You just need to hit the play button!”
MTV has guaranteed a minimum royalties payment of $10 million to Beatles rightsholders for its The Beatles: Rock Band game, which comes out next week – but if it sells as expected, the payments will top $40 million.
“The royalty rates on this are not even comparable to anything that has been done before,” Sony/ATV Music Publishing chairman Martin Bandier tells the Los Angeles Times. MTV is clearly counting on the Fab Four’s console-owning fanbase being willing to shell out for the game, which includes custom-designed instruments.
Meanwhile, MTV has launched a new initiative called Rock Band Bar Nights, to support bars holding Rock Band Nights. Participating pubs get a free five-song playable demo of the Beatles game.
And in not-necessarily-related news, Apple has confirmed that it will hold a music-focused “special event” on 9th September, the same day as The Beatles: Rock Band goes on sale – not to mention the band’s remastered back catalogue on CD. It could be co-incidence, but expect plenty of chatter about a Beatles iTunes deal in the days ahead.
(If Apple launches a Yellow Submarine iPod touch next Wednesday, remember, you heard it here first).
We’ll start with the actual news. Harmonix has revealed 19 more tracks that will feature in The Beatles: Rock Band – including Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, A Hard Day’s Night, Helter Skelter and Ticket To Ride. Meanwhile, games industry site MCV is reporting that publisher MTV is ALSO working on a Beatles karaoke game for PlayStation 3: SingStar: The Beatles.
Now for the speculation: the Rock Band game debuts on 9th September, the same day as the band’s remastered back catalogue goes on sale on CD. And 9th September is also the rumoured date of Apple’s next product launch, possibly including its new Cocktail interactive album format. TechCrunch joins the dots: will all those Beatles albums also be launch titles for Cocktail?
Give it a week, and we’ll crank up our Yellow Submarine iPod rumour again…
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr turned up onstage at Microsoft’s E3 press conference last night to plug the upcoming music game The Beatles: Rock Band – and more details of the game were also announced.
45 songs will be bundled with the game, with others available to download from a dedicated online store. One – All You Need Is Love – will have all royalties from sales donated to the Doctors Without Borders charity. There’s a trailer too – the first sight of how the game will look. Watch it above and let us know what you think.
MTV and videogame maker Harmonix are dialling up the hype volume to eleven as they begin marketing of their game “The Beatles: Rock Band”. This week they have launched a “Pre-Order Club”: customers who pre-order the game in Europe or North America will gain a code (more…)
EMI has announced that the Beatle’s back catalogue has now been digitally remastered, for a swathe of re-releases on 9 September – tying in with the release of console game The Beatles: Rock Band. However, at this time, those reissues are CD-only rather than digital, as longstanding negotiations over the latter rumble on.
A new incentive to sort that out has been provided by BigChampagne, which reports that 23% of P2P users download one or more Beatles tracks – around 14.26 million people. “The annual total [of illegal Beatles downloads] is in the many tens of millions, perhaps 100 million,” says CEO Eric Garland.
We’re wondering whether Beatles tracks will be downloadable to their official Rock Band game, actually. Estimates vary as to how many songs the band recorded – 214 seems to be a popular number from our hasty search of online wikis diligent research. They surely won’t all be included in the boxed game, so it’ll be interesting to see if the full catalogue is made available for download there.
Then again, that’s a heap of work for the game’s developer, Harmonix, so maybe they’re just focusing on the popular stuff.
Spring is in the air, so it’s time for some more speculation about the Beatles going digital. Actually, the speculating is being done by Dhani Harrison this time – George Harrison’s son, who works with Apple Corps, the company set up to manage the band’s interests.
It seems they’re mulling going it alone with a Beatles digital store, rather than signing on with iTunes. “We’re losing money every day, so what do you do?” he says. “You have to have your own delivery system, or you have to do a good deal with Steve Jobs… [Jobs] says that a download is worth 99 cents, and we disagree.”
Actually, so would Jobs – as part of its move to a fully DRM-free iTunes Store, Apple announced plans to allow variable pricing. But anyway.
Harrison says he’s the most tech-savvy person at Apple Corps, so is driving new projects forward like The Beatles: Rock Band. Has anyone got his number? We’ve got an idea for a Yellow Submarine iPod…
Harmonix has confirmed that its Beatles-themed music game will be released on 9 September this year, and will be called The Beatles: Rock Band. An official site has gone live today inviting gamers to sign up for alerts when pre-ordering begins.
It’s a big deal – the game will launch simultaneously in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, and will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
The game will include support for guitar, bass, mic and drums, but will also offer “a limited number of new hardware offerings modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career”.
EMI has announced that the Beatle’s back catalogue has now been 
Spring is in the air, so it’s time for some more speculation about the Beatles going digital. Actually, the 
