MusicNet speaks out about McCartney's catalog online sales

Pending Arrival of Paul McCartney's Solo Music Catalog for Online Sales Suggests Beatles Can't be Far Behind, Notes MusicNet's Alan McGlade

As one of last great digital holdouts (along with Led Zeppelin), Beatles' songbook will have enormous symbolic importance when it's finally available online via subscription downloads; MusicNet projects significant spike in usage and wider audience when Fab Four comes online: "All You Need is Love" and a good device.

Paul McCartney's entire body of solo work, from an album contemporaneous with the breakup of the Beatles, through his work with Wings to his latest release, will be available for digital distribution for the first time starting on May 22. It's a major step that brings the celebrated Beatles catalog that much closer to inclusion in the digital domain, said Alan McGlade, president and CEO of MusicNet, the world's leading business-to-business digital entertainment service provider.
MusicNet provides backbone technology and content, including a catalog of four million songs and videos, to top digital music services including Yahoo! Music, Virgin Digital, MTV’s Urge, and iMesh, among others.
As of now, the Beatles remain one of the few legendary rock acts whose work is not available digitally.
"Finally adding the Beatles would fix an important hole in the digital catalog," said Mr. McGlade. "The group is so central to the history of pop music that without them there has always been the perception that something fundamental was missing. Most of the great musical headliners of the past 40 years - including the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sinatra, even Elvis - have been available for digital distribution for some time. But, without the Beatles, there is a perceived gap in the catalog."
Mr. McGlade noted that only several other pop performers - notably Led Zeppelin and Garth Brooks - have not made their work available for digital distribution. "But no group spans as wide an audience, over a broader period and demographic sweep, than the Beatles," Mr. McGlade said.
"McCartney's inclusion is likely to draw many more consumers to digital music who have previously been on the sidelines," he said. "And that audience usage has the potential to increase dramatically once the majority of Beatles tunes became available."
Nearly 40 years after their demise as a band, the Beatles continue to sell steadily. In 2006, their compilation of number-one hits sold more than 450,000 units, the 14th best-selling album that year, representing 2% of the total Top 50 sales. "Obviously, those numbers would have been even more impressive had the group's work been available digitally," Mr. McGlade said, noting that Paul McCartney is the last of the Fab Four to bring his work online.
Mr. McGlade added that this isn't the first time the Beatles have been slow to embrace new technology. In the 1980s, as vinyl albums were re-released in CD form, the Beatles' work was heavily "windowed" - released a bit at a time rather than all at once - culminating with the 20th-anniversary release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
"In the age of the devices," Mr. McGlade noted, "access is more important than ownership. In other words, access to a digital playlist is today what a row of record albums book-ended by bricks was a generation ago."
He continued, "The Beatles' addition to the digital marketplace could act as a tipping point, motivating people who have not yet purchased a portable device to buy one." Mr. McGlade views the impending introduction of the Beatles catalog into the digital domain as a boon for the entire music industry "ecosystem."
"This will be the kind of event that really benefits the whole pond - music consumers, licensors, service and technology providers, and device manufacturers and other electronics innovators," he said.
Mr. McGlade, son of a jazz trumpet player, joined MusicNet in 2001 after a successful tenure at The Box Music Network, an MTV Networks company and the world's first interactive music television network. Mr. McGlade's success at The Box, after joining the company in 1995 and expanding the network to more than 40 million households in the U.S. and abroad, led him to merge the company with MTV2 to create a widely distributed companion interactive music channel to MTV.
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About MusicNet
MusicNet is the world's leading provider of business-to-business digital entertainment services. The company offers content and white-label technologies used to create music and video download and subscription services. The preferred partner of many top consumer brands, MusicNet's scalable platform delivers a quick and cost-effective path to market for PC's, portable music devices, mobile phones and beyond. The Company offers a broad range of products for companies that want a turnkey and full-service solution for offering digital music and video. MusicNet was the 2006 winner of Deloitte & Touche USA's prestigious Deloitte New York Technology Fast 50 Award. MusicNet is headquartered in New York and has offices in Seattle and London. MusicNet is wholly-owned by Baker Capital, a New York-based private equity firm with $1.5 billion under management. For more information about MusicNet, please visit