Tech Shout!

The Beatles have finally decided to start selling songs online after years of persistent refusal to participate in the online music downloads revolution.

Neil Aspinall, of Beatles’ Apple Corps, said that Apple Corps is digitally re-mastering the original Beatles recordings for eventual reissues and wants the Beatles music downloads to coincide with the re-mastered CD releases.

Aspinall said, “I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters.”

It is still not certain as to when the Beatles tracks will be made available for download and through which online music stores.

The music will be released this summer as a companion album to the as-yet-untitled Cirque show.

To obtain Beatles music digitally now, consumers must buy a CD, copy it to a computer hard drive and transfer it to an iPod or other music device.

The songs are also readily available on illegal file-sharing networks, where the Beatles are constantly among the top 25 most downloaded artists, says Eric Garland, CEO of research firm BigChampagne.