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Paul Business Hero

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by Russ Mitchell
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Jun 23 2008 12:00am EDT

Paul: Business Hero

Russ Mitchell notes: The news that The Beatles music might appear on video games shows the original approach taken by record label EMI's private equity owners, who aim to profit from EMI's extensive back catalog in the face of declining CD sales. EMI owns The Beatles' master recordings, the rights to which are essential to any Guitar Hero or Rock Band inclusion of the Fab Four's megahits.

If the deal with game-maker Activision goes through, it will also demonstrate that the various representatives of The Beatles' business interests are finally getting their act together. Paul McCartney is the only former Beatle who has shown the slightest understanding of digital distribution. Of course, John Lennon and George Harrison are no longer with us, but their representatives have proved clueless about the Internet. Only recently has Lennon's catalog become widely available for sale on the Web, while Harrison's solo work remians hard to find on legimate websites, making pirate downloads the only way to go. Even Ringo, who is still alive, has yet to make his latest album widely avaiable for digital sale, and you'd think he'd need all the marketing channels he could get.
McCartney, by contrast, has long made his music easy to find and buy on the Internet. No surprise: As any good biography of the band makes clear, McCartney was the brain behind The Beatles' business success.
By the way, Guitar Heroes ought to know that, while Harrison was the band's lead guitarist, many of The Beatles' tastiest guitar licks were recorded by Paul. Read about it here.

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