The Beatles are finally available in digital form. However, you need to shell out $279.99 for it. Granted, it comes in an apple-shaped USB stick, both in FLAC and MP3 formats. It seems they are all-together shunning the iTunes music store.
Apple Corps and EMI Music have announced the worldwide release a limited edition of only 30,000 Stereo USB devices. What do you get for that? The same thing the band and EMI Music Group are already selling for $219: All of the band"s music, in a remastered stereo mix — the same just released in a CD set. For all those die-hard fans paying extra yet, you get the same tunes bundled up in a single USB stick. Like so:
On the device there is a specially designed Flash interface that has been installed, and the 16GB USB"s audio and visual contents will be provided in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps formats, fully compatible with PC and Mac. This it also includes the 13 mini-documentaries about the studio albums. To be fair, it"s impossible to get such high-quality audio on the free YouTube videos. It"s quite an imposition to ask of the fans to plunk down more than $200 (£200 in the UK) for it, though.
The Apple shaped USB-stick will be available on December 7th (December 8th in North America), pre-orders are available at The Beatles store.