The last thing the Beatles estate, EMI and iTunes are singing right now is “Yer Blues.”
One week after their much anticipated digital debut on iTunes, Apple says the Fab Four have sold over 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs.
Now that doesn’t quite make them Taylor Swift, who according to Billboard sold well over 1 million copies of her latest album “Speak Now” the week after it came out on Oct. 25, and it might pale next to first week sales for Kayne West’s just released “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.”
But for a band that broke up 40 years ago, it is, to name-check the beloved George Harrison ballad, “something.”
In terms of dollars, those Fab sales translate into well over $10 million, with single songs going for $1.29, albums for $12.99 and double albums, like compilations and 1968’s “The White Album,” going for $19.99. The Beatles Box, with basically every song the band ever recorded, costs $149.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the band's “Abbey Road,” from 1969, was the highest placed Beatles album on the iTunes chart, coming in at #19. The next to follow was “The White Album” at #30 and the ground breaking “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” at #36.
