The Beatles on iTunes: Cock-up or Coup?

More than seven years after the launch of the iTunes service prompted Beatles/Apple executive Neil Aspinall to sue Apple Computers, the Beatles' music is finally available this afternoon for digital download - legally. For $1.29 or 99p, you can now obtain official access to any song from the Beatles' catalogue. The service's one-price-fits-all ethos means that eight minutes plus of 'Revolution 9' costs as much as the twenty-odd seconds of 'Her Majesty'; likewise, seven minutes of 'Hey Jude' is no more expensive than the minute-long madness of 'Wild Honey Pie'.

If you prefer, you can download the individual albums for a little more than it will cost you to buy the equivalent CD, if you shop around; or you can splash out for an entire Beatles box, which includes a complete film of the group's first US concert, at the Washington Coliseum in February 1964.

The long-awaited announcement from the frequently warring parties of Apple, EMI and the Beatles marks an end - for the moment, he said cynically - to the legal battles that have scarred their three-way relations for years. It's being treated as a major international news story, but then everything involving the Beatles always is. What remains to be seen is whether the lengthy delay has merely increased anticipation and demand, or whether this announcement is simply too late.

Conventional wisdom suggests that everyone involved in this saga has lost money, in enormous quantities, by delaying the iTunes release. It's understood that, once relations between Apple (the computer company) and Apple (the Beatles' base) had been normalised, the sticking-point was an all-too-familiar financial quarrel between the Beatles and their record distributors since 1962, EMI. Typically, the two sides were unable to agree on precisely how the proceeds from the downloads should be divided between them. So instead of raking in the proceeds from downloads for the past few years, they've been splashing out cash on lawyers and legal advice instead. In theory, the optimum time to release the downloads would have been last year, when the remastered CDs reached the shops, and a brief wave of Beatlemania hypnotised the worldwide media.

But I'm wondering whether the delay might actually turn out to have suited everyone (except maybe iTunes, who are the clear losers) quite nicely. Consider this theory. Exhausted by the wait for downloads, many casual buyers may have bought one or more of the CDs instead, alongside those fans who splashed out on the lot. Now, more than a year later, many of these purchasers might be tempted to fork out again, especially with the prospect of the Washington concert as a bonus. I've already seen online posts from fans who bought both the mono and stereo box sets last year, but who can't wait to buy all the same music one more time, just to keep their collections complete.

So when the Beatles and EMI draw up their profit-and-loss accounts, they will have to balance the potential income they lost last year against the financial value of two waves of publicity hype, and possibly a double dose of purchasing power again. If my guess is right, and enough fans turn out to have bought the CDs and the downloads, then the iTunes delay may prove to be a stroke of Machiavellian genius, rather than the commercial disaster that many people (myself included) had always assumed it must be.