You’ll soon be able to listen to The Beatles on Apple Music and Google Play

The Fab Four are coming to streaming music services everywhere. Photo: The Beatles

The Fab Four are coming to streaming music services everywhere. Photo: The Beatles

Forget The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles are coming to Apple Music, Google Play, and a variety of other online streaming music services — and just in time for Christmas, too.

Starting Christmas Eve, the Fab Four will be available for your listening pleasure on Apple Music, Spotify, Slacker, Tidal, Microsoft’s Groove, Rhapsody, Deezer, Google Play, and Amazon Prime.

Unlike Taylor Swift, The Beatles’ music can be accessed on the free tier of services which offer this feature.

While not all of the companies have commented yet, it is likely that some special features will be dropping alongside the music. For instance, Rhapsody has announced that it will celebrate the event by releasing a special editorial experience to take listeners through The Beatles’ legendary history with hand-curated playlists, articles, and a pictorial history slideshow.

The Beatles were relatively late to the online music game, with a deal to make their music available for download on iTunes only being brokered in 2010. Although that deal was what opened the door for today’s announcement, for years Apple and The Beatles were at in and out of court with one another.

The reason? The possible marketplace confusion between Apple (the tech company) and Apple Records (The Beatles’ music label). First filed in 1978, the case was temporarily settled in 1981, when Apple (tech company) paid out a relatively paltry $80,000.

However, that deal precluded Apple from entering the music field, which it did in a small way in 1986 with the creation of its MIDI tools, and later — in a much bigger way — with the iTunes Music Store.

When you think about it that way, the fact that The Beatles can soon be listened to via an Apple Music subscription is very little short of a Christmas miracle.

Source: Re/code