As Christmas approaches, it appears that Apple believes consumers will look to gift their friends and loved ones with music from The Beatles, so it has pushed live a new ‘Covers’ iTunes advert and made the Yellow Submarine iBook free to download.
Earlier this morning, Apple added a new video to its YouTube channel. The new video, entitled ‘Covers’, showcases a number of different Beatles album covers (hence the title), reminding consumers that Apple can take care of their music download needs. Coupled with the fact many families will be gifting iPhones and iPods this Christmas, sales of a $100+ digital boxset will be high on Apple’s agenda.
On Friday, The Beatles announced that it had worked with Apple to make the Yellow Submarine iBook available free on the iBookstore, taking the reader on a “kaleidoscopic, music-filled journey with The Beatles to an underwater dreamland featuring animated illustrations and text from the 2004 book, 14 full-color video clips from the original 1968 film.”
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The iBook also contains audio clips of Beatles hits, the original Yellow Submarine score and dialogue from the film, as well as “read aloud functionality” and narration by actor Dean Lennox Kelly.
Having fought with The Beatles’ Apple music label (particularly Yoko Ono), Apple finally secured the rights to sell The Beatles tracks on its iTunes music store in November last year. The company began offering individual tracks and albums as well as a boxset of the band’s entire work for $149, prompting a price war with Internet retail giant Amazon.
The addition of the catalog proved a success for the Cupertino-based company; by January Apple had already sold 5 million songs and 1 million albums on iTunes — a far cry from the 180 million+ albums sales the band had racked up over the decades but impressive for the digital music download service in such a short period of time.
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