Sixteen months after its back-catalogue finally arrived on iTunes, and three weeks after it became available as official ringtones, The Beatles’ music has now been licensed to TouchTunes Interactive Networks, North America’s largest downloading pay-per-play network of digital jukeboxes.
TouchTunes provides jukeboxes to more than 50,000 bars and restaurants across North America, and says it has around 2 million songs played across the network each day, with more than three million licensed tracks in total.
Now, TouchTunes has partnered with Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music to bring the Beatles’ music to its jukeboxes from April 1, including all thirteen studio albums and the two-volume ‘Past Masters’ compilation, the classic ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ collections, the ‘1’ hits collection, and the ‘LOVE’ album.
“It is a privilege to partner with EMI and Apple Corps Ltd. to make available the sound recordings of the most celebrated band of all time,” says Charles Goldstuck, CEO of TouchTunes Interactive Networks. “The important addition of The Beatles to our network represents a milestone, not only for our company, but for our industry.”
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Apple Corps. was founded by The Beatles in 1968 to look after the group’s own affairs, and the London-based company has administered the catalogue of The Beatles releases which have sold more than 600 million records, tapes and CDs to date. The Beatles signed a record deal with EMI in the 1960s.
‘The Fab Four’ have shifted somewhere in the region of 177 million albums in the United States alone, but the band was always notable by its absence in the digital space before it arrived on iTunes in late 2010. Now with the TouchTunes deal, the Beatles will live on in thousands of bars and restaurants across the US.
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