Apple Inc. Gets Elton John's Catalogue of Music

Apple Inc. drops a big sound byte and reports in its paper, Mac Daily News, it has Elton John's entire library of music. Elton John has more than 30 albums and he has made all of them available to Apple iTunes exclusively for digital download, the singer also said on Wednesday. This marks the first time all of the singer's 400 plus songs will be available for digital download. You may recall the rumor mill a short time ago surrounding the Beatles and Apple Inc.'s iTunes service supposedly being the first and/or only service with their music catalog available for digital download only to have a Beatles spokesman come out and squash the rumor saying it would be available to all legal download services at the same time. Looks like they now get to take some of that pie-on-the-face off with this agreement with and announcement by Elton John.

Elton John said that he has wanted his entire music catalog to be online worldwide for some time now. The catalog will be exclusively for download from Apple Inc.'s iTunes service between April 26th and April 30th before being made available to other legal download services. He obviously didn't mention which 'other' places would have the catalog starting on May 1st. That would have taken the boom out of Apple Inc.'s thunder in announcing this agreement. He has already released some of his work online in the United States. We got our Elton John through Napster. But this will be the first time his music will be available in its entirety, digitally, and worldwide. "I knew that the entire catalog, not just the hits needed care and attention to be released this way. Now that it's happening, I'm glad for the fan's sake," Elton John said in a statement on Wednesday.It coincides with his 60th birthday and the global release by Universal Music Group's Mercury Records 18-song digitally and physically re-formatted 18-song compilation of his works, "Rocket Man-the Definitive Hits," including such songs as "Candle in the Wind," and "Tiny Dancer."