The Beatles' website has announced that a limited edition USB thumb drive containing the band's complete remastered stereo collection will be released in December:
"Following the September 9 (9-9-09) debut of The Beatles’ digitally re-mastered catalogue on CD, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are pleased to announce the worldwide release of a limited edition of only 30,000 Beatles Stereo USB apples on December 7 (December 8 in North America)."
The release goes on to say that "the 16GB USB’s audio contents will be provided in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps formats."
The Beatles (or what's left of them) have long been holdouts on joining the digital age. There is currently nowhere you can legally download Beatles songs. So this is kind of a big deal.
What stands out to me is the statement that the drive uses "a specially designed Flash interface" and the compatibility with "PC and Mac," yet no mention of mp3 players at all. This specific language has set my paranoid mind to wondering if buyers will be forced to keep the tracks on the USB drive, with some sort of DRM enabled so that files cannot be transferred to an mp3 player (and possibly not even to the buyer's computer).
Or maybe this is only being released in limited edition as a test to see how quickly 30,000 White Albums turn into 90,000 White Albums as the files get copied and traded.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into this. I just can't imagine that after all this fuss, the Beatles would hand out a digital box set without any DRM at all, so I'm curious how it will be implemented. Anyway, if ripping a CD is beyond your capabilities and you love the Beatles (Paul McCartney, I'm looking at you), then this might just be what you want this Christmas.
