Hello, Goodbye! The Beatles Come to iTunes, and Now We Can All Move On

If you checked in with the Twittersphere last night, you might think that getting the world’s biggest band into the world’s biggest music store is a bad thing. Cue the jaded digerati complaining that the Beatles to iTunes news is a yawn.

And let’s be clear: Getting the band’s stuff on Apple’s store won’t fundamentally change anything.

• The band members will see more money. But they have plenty already.
• It’s possible that the Beatles’ label, EMI Music Group, may get enough short-term cash to keep it out of Citigroup’s hands. But there are very few of you reading this who care about that.
• Apple will see a spike in iTunes music sales. But Apple moved on from iTunes music sales a long time ago: ITunes is all about apps these days, and Steve Jobs would like it to be more about TV and movies, too. Meanwhile digital music sales flattened out this year, and even the Fab Four will have a hard time changing that.
• It does mean that bloggy types can stop making random guesses about when the Beatles will come to iTunes. So that’s pretty great, really.

And look. It’s cool that the band will be on iTunes. It’s embarrassing that it hasn’t been, but now that we’re past this, we can just consider the-better-late-than-never move a “pivot,” right? Fundamentally: More good music, available more places, is a good thing.

The thing I’m most interested to learn this morning (or whenever we do find out) is whether you’ll be able to buy the band’s output on a song-by-song basis. [UPDATE: Answered.]

If the band is trying to maximize revenue, it would try to force Jobs to break from store policy and sell their music in only album format. But that would be hypocritical, since the Beatles, like most other bands of their era, were about singles for a very long time.

And wouldn’t it be cool if you’d never heard “Flying” before, and then someone played you the trippy instrumental track from “Magical Mystery Tour,” and then, $1.29 later, you could be walking around with the tune in your iPod? Right?

What’s that? You’ve never heard “Flying” before? No problem: You can hear it on YouTube, of course:

And if you’re looking for other Beatles songs, Google’s video site is happy to oblige. They’ve even made a 41-song mix for you. No credit card required.