Edible Apple

The Beatles coming to iTunes has been a rumor that’s been floating around for years now, but just recently it picked up some steam once again, in large part due to the significance of the date of Apple’s media event tomorrow – 9/9/09 – which is also when the entire remastered Beatles catalogue will be re-issued and when a Beatles themed version of “Rock Band” will go on sale.

Alas, the timing of Apple’s media event is more of a coincidence than anything else.  Citing sources “familiar with the band’s plans”, Peter Kafka of AllThingsD writes that the Beatles on iTunes just ain’t happenin’ tomorrow.

The reason, not surprisingly, boils down to cold hard cash.

If you’re trying to convince people to spend $16.99 for a remastered copy of the White Album , or as much as $250 to play along with the band’s ghostly avatars, why offer a competing product from Apple at the same time?

Nor do I see Steve Jobs expressing much interest in coordinating his marketing announcements with the likes of Viacom.

Pretty straight forward, really.  The record labels aren’t exactly buddy buddy with Apple and iTunes, so why would they want to stifle or diminish the selling power of the remastered Beatles tracks with $1.29 individual song downloads from iTunes?  The record labels may be greedy, but they certainly aren’t stupid.  Well, not completely stupid, anyways.

At this rate, the Beatles might finally hit iTunes when I’m 64.  Wow, that was bad, we know…