McCartney's house removed from Google street view

Agencies - May 22, 2009

Beatles legend Paul McCartney's home has been removed from Google Street View after he made a complaint. 

The singer was reportedly furious when he discovered that fans could google his multi-million-pound home online, the Sun reported.  McCartney's house in St John's Wood, North London, was photographed along with others on the posh street as part of Google's ground-level views of the city. 

The 66-year-old star's security team, which monitors access to the house 24 hours a day, complained to the web giant as McCartney has been careful about security since bandmate John Lennon was murdered in 1980.  "He was unsettled when he heard Google users could get a 360-degree view of the property," a source said. 

A Google spokesman said anyone could now remove their house from the site by clicking a button.  The star penned classic tracks 'Penny Lane', 'Getting Better' and 'Hey Jude' in the town house which he bought in 1965 for 40,000 pounds.

Source: http://www.mtv.com

Remastered Beatles finally coming Sept. 9

By Greg Kot | Tribune critic / April 8, 2009

In what could be a prelude to making the Beatles catalog available as digital files at online stores, the band's entire collection of compact discs will be digitally remastered for the first time in two decades and re-released Sept. 9.

The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music made the joint announcement Tuesday. The CDs will be released with new liner notes and photos, and will be embedded for a limited period with a brief digital documentary film about each album. Two new Beatles CD boxed sets, one in mono and one in stereo, will also be released.The release date will coincide with the debut of "The Beatles: Rock Band" video game, the band's first foray into digital music.

For many Beatles fans, much of the anticipation regarding the back catalog has centered on when and how it would become available as high-quality digital downloads. In separate interviews with the Tribune two years ago, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono said there would be a digital rollout of the Beatles catalog "soon" but would not give a specific date.With Tuesday's announcement, that conversion appears to be a little closer to reality, though in typical Beatles fashion, "no further information [is] available at this time."  MORE>>>>>

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com

Original Beatles digitally remastered

Tue Apr 7, 2009

by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato

The original Beatles catalogue has been digitally remastered for the first time and will go on sale in CD format on September 9, the band's record label and company announced on Tuesday.The release will coincide with the launch of "The Beatles: Rock Band" video game, the quartet's first major leap into the world of digital music.The catalogue will not be available online for the foreseeable future, although the digital remastering is widely seen as bringing that process one step closer.

"Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue," a statement issued on behalf of record label EMI and Beatles company Apple Corps Ltd said.

"There is no further information available at this time."

Fans of arguably the world's most successful pop band, with album sales of more than 600 million worldwide, are eager for the Beatles to release the catalogue online.The group is one of the few big acts left whose music is not available on Apple Inc's iTunes, but the settlement of a trademark dispute between Apple Inc and Apple Corps Ltd in 2007 was seen as finally clearing the way.The new collection comprises 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in Britain, and "Magical Mystery Tour", which became part of the Beatles' core catalogue when the CDs were released in 1987.In addition the collections "Past Masters Vol. I and II" are combined as one title, making up 14 titles overall.

"This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc," the statement said.The 14 albums will be available for purchase individually or together in a stereo boxed set.For the specialist collector, there will be another boxed set called "The Beatles in Mono" which combines all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release.The albums were remastered by a team of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over four years using up-to-date recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com