All of the group's studio recordings will be reissued Sept. 9 in remastered versions and are expected to generate renewed excitement about the Beatles' blue-chip catalog and pump millions of dollars into a beleaguered music industry.
The upgraded editions come long after many other classic rock groups' recordings have been updated two and three times since CDs were introduced in 1983. All of the music will be released on CDs -- with plans for digital distribution still being worked on -- on the same day “The Beatles: Rock Band" edition of the popular video game series premieres, bringing the group and its music in front of new listeners in a dramatic new form.
“It has been a long time coming," said Martin Lewis, a Beatles scholar who was U.S. marketing strategist for the 1994 “Live at the BBC" album and the three volumes of the “Anthology" series that followed. “The Beatles are the only artists that can get away with having such a long delay in remastering their catalog. “But however frustrated fans may be for the 22-year wait since their music first appeared on CD, they're not going to be disappointed in the results," said Lewis, who is not directly involved in this project but who has heard some of the recordings at EMI Music's Abbey Road Studios in London, where the remastering project has been underway for four years.
All 12 studio albums will be reissued in their original U.K. configurations, with original album artwork and liner notes, as well as new essays, detailed historical notes, rare photos, previously unreleased studio chat among the band members and other extras. Apple Corps, the record company the Beatles established in their final years together, and EMI Music, which owns their recordings, announced the release Tuesday.
Those recordings have continued to sell strongly and attract new generations of fans long after the quartet disbanded in 1970. Since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking retail sales in 1991, more than 57 million Beatles albums have sold in the U.S. In 2008, 1.4 million copies were sold, according to SoundScan.
But EMI and Apple have taken criticism for taking so long in getting the remasters out, especially when the health of the CD format is in question.
“There will be cynics who will point quite accurately to the vanishing CD marketplace," Lewis said. “There's no doubt it will not do as spectacularly well as had they reissued them in 2001 in the wake of the '1' [hits compilation] album, which has sold 31 million copies worldwide and 8 million in the U.S. But any cynics who say the Beatles have missed the boat will be wrong. This will sell exceedingly well and will be a huge boost to the recorded music industry.
“And if the CD is going to die," he said, “the Beatles are going to give it a superb wake."
