Tag: beatles
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Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band gets immersive with Dolby

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Bad news if you want to hear the all-new remixed version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the flesh: tickets to the “immersive experience” in the band’s native Liverpool are already sold out.

The good news, however, is that the remix – in the Dolby Atmos format – is also being made available to stream globally. For now, it’s only on one service, Amazon Music HD, which is one of the first to support Dolby Atmos. However, Universal Music’s press release announcing this promised that there will be “further services to follow in 2020”.

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Why don’t streaming services know who wrote The Beatles’ songs?

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The latest twist in the controversies around ‘notices of intent’ (NOIs) in the US concerns the most famous band of all-time: The Beatles.

The Music Tech Policy blog notes, with clear scorn, that Google, Amazon and Spotify have all filed NOIs for works by The Beatles, including ‘Love Me Do’, ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ and ‘Penny Lane’.

For all three of these examples, the NOIs were filed with the songwriters listed as ‘unknown’ by the streaming services (Amazon and Google in those instances) although to Spotify’s credit, at least Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison are listed as the songwriters in its filings.

Posted inData, News

Beatles reach 250m Spotify streams in first month

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Just how popular are the Beatles on Spotify?

A post on the streaming service’s Insights blog on Friday provided some stats: “Over 250 million streams so far — and it hasn’t even been a month yet”.

For context, Adele’s ‘Hello’ alone has done 356m Spotify streams in three months since its release. Meanwhile, the Beatles have 10.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify – a third of Justin Bieber’s.

Posted inData, News

Spotify releases Beatles stats and signs Rob da Bank

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Just after Christmas, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek published some stats about the popularity of the Beatles on his service.

“In the first 3 days since The Beatles landed on Spotify, fans have streamed more than 70 million songs. What’s even cooler is that over 65% of their listeners on Spotify are under the age of 34,” wrote Ek in a blog post.

A week on, though, exactly how popular are the Beatles really with Spotify’s young-skewing audience? At the time of writing, the band have just under 8.3 million monthly listeners on the streaming service, which only makes them the 66th most popular artist on Spotify.

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The Beatles tipped to be streaming by Christmas

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2015 may yet have one more digital-music surprise in store, with reports that the Beatles’ back catalogue will finally be available to stream from Christmas Eve.

Billboard’s story has been making waves around the world, even if it’s unclear whether there’s an exclusive deal involved, as when Beatles downloads first went on sale on Apple’s iTunes store in 2010.

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George Harrison back catalogue now available to stream

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George Harrison has become the fifth and final Beatle to have his back catalogue available to stream – yes, fifth, because we’re counting the Pete Best Band.

Harrison’s solo catalogue is now available on a range of streaming services, just like John, Paul and Ringo’s (and Pete’s). McCartney removed his solo albums from streaming services in 2010 before rejoining them in November 2012, while Lennon’s back catalogue was made available to stream in October 2014.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Spotify adds John Lennon back catalogue. Next stop, Beatles?

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When it comes to digital music, The Beatles are still tied to Apple. But step-by-step, Spotify is bagging the Fab Four – even if it’s having to do it individually with solo works.

Ringo Starr’s been on Spotify for a while – his live version of Yellow Submarine has been streamed nearly 365,000 times, y’know. Paul McCartney’s back catalogue was removed from streaming services in 2010, but returned in late 2012.