Was Something Happening With The Beatles Today?

Hadn't heard much about it.

Seriously, though, the Rock Band deal is interesting if only for the fact that a video game with downloadable content has made it possible for unsigned bands to get their downloadable songs on the exact same platform as a legendary supergroup using the Rock Band network. Record the song, do a little rhythm programming with Reaper and a program called Magma, and send it off. It's something to note because none of the other download services have yet made this feat possible, and it's not like you can just rip your Beatles CDs into Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

And now that there are even more CDs to rip into your media player of choice, the lack of any Beatles songs on iTunes matters even less, really. You've got the remastered albums for the fans and purists, and you can tempt the kids into listening with the video game without having to repurchase the albums. So everybody wins - except for iTunes. And I'm writing this before the Apple announcement today, so who knows what will happen. I'll be interested in any news on Cocktail or new iPod formats, but it probably won't go much beyond that, from what I'm reading.

Any download news probably won't matter much, though. The Beatles already have everything they need from the digital world.