According to Fortune:

While details remain to be worked out, Fortune has learned that iTunes is close to a deal to bring the Beatles catalog online. Apple Computer is said to be angling to become the exclusive online music store for the Beatles for a limited window of time. Other music stores, such as Microsoft’s MSN and Rhapsody, have courted the Beatles over the years to no avail, but it appears Apple is close to getting first dibs on the band’s hits.

At a recent industry conference, David Munns, head of EMI North America, said the Beatles would be available online “soon.” The parties were hoping to make a splashy announcement to coincide with the Nov. 21 release by EMI’s Capitol Records of “Love,” a mashup of Beatles songs that serves as a soundtrack to a Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil production. That didn’t happen. Apple Corps declined to comment.

As Fortune went to press, numerous deal points were still being hammered out. According to a music industry executive apprised of the talks, the parties were discussing how lengthy a window of exclusivity iTunes might get and how many tens of millions of dollars Jobs – who is said to be personally involved in the discussions – will commit to an advance for the band and marketing costs.

Also being discussed is whether the band would be willing to take two steps at the same time and endorse the iPod by allowing its music to be used in a commercial. Another scenario making the rounds is the prospect of the Beatles following U2’s example with a branded iPod. “If the Beatles were in an iPod ad, that would be humongous,” this executive said.

Humongous indeed. I too thought that it would have been a great coup for the Beatles to make their digital debut last week to coincide with the release of LOVE. When Tuesday came and went without “A Day in the Life” or “Yesterday” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” in the iTunes store I went on about my business of buying the physical copy at Target. Oh well. There is still light at the end of the tunnel.

When the Beatles’ Apple Corps lost their lawsuit to Apple Computers last year I felt that Jobs had a huge advantage at getting the digital rights to the Fab Fours catalogue. Don’t go after lawyer fees or court costs but ask for a meeting to discuss the future.

It looks like that is exactly what happened.

link

More Zune fallout:

Zune Sinks– Forbes

The new Zune Marketplace is even stupider. Microsoft is trying to break open Apple’s near monopoly of the music market, so they’re launching an online music store that competes with iTunes. The only difference here is that iTunes is simple, elegant, and intuitive. The Zune Marketplace seems like the polar opposite. It has fewer songs. No audiobooks or podcasts. It doesn’t sell movies or TV shows. And if you actually want to buy a song, you’ve got to lay out big chunks of cash and jump through more hoops than a circus lion. Get a load of this passage from Walt Mossberg’s Journal review:

“To buy even a single 99-cent song from the Zune store, you have to purchase blocks of “points” from Microsoft, in increments of at least $5. You can’t just click and have the 99 cents deducted from a credit card, as you can with iTunes. You must first add points to your account, then buy songs with these points. So, even if you are buying only one song, you have to allow Microsoft, one of the world’s richest companies, to hold on to at least $4.01 of your money until you buy another. And the point system is deceptive. Songs are priced at 79 points, which some people might think means 79 cents. But 79 points actually cost 99 cents.”

Don’t feel bad if you have to go back and read that a few times before it makes sense –I know I did. Buying music from Microsoft seems awkward, over-complicated, and designed from the bottom up to squeeze every last cent out of the consumer.

Tune Into Zune? by Steven Levy (Newsweek)

What’s more, when I tried to send a Rolling Stones song I just bought on the Zune Marketplace to another Zune, I got a message reading, “Can’t receive songs because of rights restrictions.” Huh? Microsoft says that in a minority of cases it was unable to secure artist rights for even this limited form of sharing, and that’s the message you get when you try to send songs from those holdouts. Seems to me that when you buy those non-sharable songs from the Zune Marketplace you should be warned about this. But Microsoft says that they have no plans to give you that information, even if it makes you look like an idiot when you waste a friend’s time by trying to send a song and getting only that insulting error message.

Full Disclosure: Levy’s book The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness is in my Top Ten Books of 2006

Ok, so it looks like the Zune player is being plauged by setbacks and detractors- on its launch day!!! However, let me say two things.

1) I like the choice to add the color brown. Every article has been overly critical of this palete choice. I say good move.

2) It does look pretty. The Newsweek article had a great picture:

The Social is a tough place. Better bring you’re A game.

Today/Tomorrow Microsoft releases its much hyped hoped iPod killer, Zune. First off let me say that I welcome the Zune because I welcome open and free competition. It makes products better. It keeps companies on their toes. However, I have no expectations that the Zune player will help push portable music into a new era. It seems rushed and for every good thing (wireless sharing) there are a half dozen out-right failures (the strings attached to wireless sharing) in creating something truly remarkable. Take this review from the New York Times. It is all over the map.

As it turns out, the player is excellent. It can’t touch the iPod’s looks or coolness, but it’s certainly more practical. It’s coated in slightly rubberized plastic, available in white, black or brown — yes, brown. It won’t turn heads, but it won’t get fingerprinty and scratched, either. It sounds just as good as the iPod.

The Zune looks cooler than the iPod but it won’t turn heads? Strike One

The Zune matches the price ($250) and capacity of the 30-gigabyte iPod. But it’s noticeably thicker (0.6 inch vs. 0.4), taller (4.4 inches vs. 4.1) and heavier (5.6 ounces vs. 4.8). Battery life is the same for music playback (14 hours), slightly better for video (4 hours vs. 3.5).

It has the same battery life, storage capacity, and it costs the exact same price as an iPod but it is larger, heavier, and more cumbersome? Strike Two.

The Zune 1.0 player is pretty barren, too. It doesn’t have a single standard iPod amenity: no games, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, password-protected volume limiter, equalizer, calendar, address book or notes module.

Ball 1.

Incredibly, you can’t even use the Zune as an external hard drive, as you can with just about every other player on earth — an extremely handy option for carting around big computer files.

Foul Ball.

The big, whomping Zune news, though, is wireless sharing. The Zune has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna. (Turning it on costs you one hour of battery life.) During the playback of any photo or song, you can view a list of Zunes within 30 feet. Sending a song takes about 15 seconds, a photo 2 seconds; you can’t send videos at all. Your lucky recipient can accept or decline your offering — and, if you have really terrible taste, can block your Zune permanently.

It all works well enough, but it’s just so weird that Zunes can connect only to each other. Who’d build a Wi-Fi device that can’t connect to a wireless network — to sync with your PC, for example? Nor to an Internet hot spot, to download music directly?

Microsoft also faces what’s known as the Dilemma of the First Guy With a Telephone: Who you gonna call? The Zune will have to rack up some truly amazing sales before it’s easy to find sharing partners.

(Skip down one paragraph) The bigger problem, though, is the draconian copy protection on beamed music (though not photos). You can play a transmitted song only three times, all within three days. After that, it expires. You’re left with only a text tag that shows up on your PC so that — how convenient! — you can buy the song from Microsoft’s store.

This copy protection is as strict as a 19th-century schoolmarm. Just playing half the song (or one minute, whichever comes first) counts as one “play.” You can never resend a song to the same friend. A beamed song can’t be passed along to a third person, either.

What’s really nuts is that the restrictions even stomp on your own musical creations. Microsoft’s literature suggests that if you have a struggling rock band, you could “put your demo recordings on your Zune” and “when you’re out in public, you can send the songs to your friends.” What it doesn’t say: “And then three days later, just when buzz about your band is beginning to build, your songs disappear from everyone’s Zunes, making you look like an idiot.”

Microsoft says that the wireless sharing is a new way to discover music. But you can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a big plug for Microsoft’s music store. If it’s truly about the joy of music discovery, why doesn’t Microsoft let you buy your discoveries from any of the PlaysForSure stores?

Strike 3.

I know what you’re thinking, “Micheal, we all know that you’ve taken the iPod kool-aid! iTunes has copyright restrictions, the iPod battery life stinks, it has had its day in the sun. You’re just blinded to new things that aren’t Apple products.”

No, I’m not blinded by my love for my iPod. The Zune does have a couple of neat bells and wistles that I would like to see on the next iPod.

Things like customization of the menus. On the Zune you can use any photo as the wallpaper making a truly unique device that can show off your distinctive personality.

Sorry to say, but I am underwhelmed by the Zune. Grossly underwhelmed. I was hoping for something great. Instead we were given something that reeks of corporate think-tankery- A product that latches onto the market to make a quick buck instead of driving the market forward to bigger and better things.

I wish the Zune the best but history’s landfills are filled with thousands products that promised big but delivered too little. The iPod has dominated our commerce, our vocabulary, and even our cultural identities. When I’m at the gym inevitably someone with an iPod will see me using mine and will give me a nod. Silently we know that we are part of something: brothers and sisters in the world of music appreciation. Will Zune users experience that same sense of camaraderie? That same sence of knowing? We shall see.

The consumers begin to vote with their wallets this week and by Christmas we should have a better idea of how long the Zune will last.

Yes, Welcome to the Social.