At one point, George Harrison’s catalog was available on a number of the streaming services but it was slowly withdrawn a few years ago.

As of last Friday, such albums as All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World and Dark Horse, have returned and are available on such services as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play, Rhapsody, rdio and Tidal.

Harrison joins his former Beatles bandmates who also have their music on the streaming services; however, the music by the full band is among one of the great missing pieces to the streaming revolution.

Harrison was known as the quiet Beatles and that continued on into his solo years. Never as prolific as his three bandmates, releasing just ten albums post-breakup with only the four making the U.S. top ten and three in the U.K. All Things Must Pass was the biggest of his career, which included the double sided hit My Sweet Lord / Isn’t It a Pity along with What is Life and the followup, Living in the Material World, which included his second of three number 1 singles Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).

He would return to the top in 1987 with Got My Mind Set on You, a song originally recorded in 1962 by James Ray.

Harrison died on November 29, 2001 at the age of 57 from lung cancer.

With many thanks to Noise 11

Terrific version of George's "Savoy Truffle" by the late, great Ella Fitzgerald.

All Beatles’ music catalogue to become available on streaming services

Fans of the Beatles around the world are getting a big Christmas present this year, as the iconic band’s full catalogue is released on major streaming services today.

London-based Apple Corps/UMG, which holds the rights to the music, posted the news on the Beatles’ website and released a video teaser on YouTube. The Beatles’ 13 remastered studio albums and four collections will be available at 12:01am Thursday in each country’s time zone, the band’s label said. New Zealand, then Australia led the way as the catalogue comes on line around the world.
Participating streaming services include Spotify AB, Apple’s Apple Music, Jay Z’s Tidal, Deezer, Alphabet’s Google Play and Amazon.com’s Amazon Prime.

The Beatles’ long-awaited streaming debut is a boon for the music industry. It could give a boost to the subscriber numbers of music streaming services, which record labels see as key to their future as CD sales and downloads decline. In particular, the Beatles’ songbook could help hook older, less tech-savvy consumers on music streaming, which hasn’t yet become a mainstream practice in the US.

Spotify, the largest service, counts more than 20 million paying subscribers and about 80 million free users worldwide; Apple Music had 6.5 million subscribers and 8.5 million in free trial as of October.

Though the Beatles catalogue will be available to both Spotify’s paying and free users, paying subscriber numbers could still see growth thanks to the sheer publicity the releases bring to Spotify’s brand.

The Beatles’ rights holders had long been interested in making the catalogue available on streaming services to maintain the relevancy of the Beatles brand, according to a person familiar with the matter. Though Spotify, Apple and Google would likely have paid handsomely for the exclusive streaming rights, the Beatles camp elected to release the material on all services and tiers to reach the broadest possible swath of fans.

While the move could dampen already declining CD and download sales in the long term, strengthening the brand could boost other revenue streams such as merchandise sales and Beatles-themed shows.

The Beatles have sold about 900,000 albums and two million digital songs this year, down from 1.2 million albums and 2.7 million songs last year, according to Nielsen Music.

Nielsen analyst Dave Bakula said that the Beatles’ streaming arrival could possibly even help sales by turning people onto the band for the first time.

“It’s hard to believe that anybody hasn’t discovered the Beatles yet, but there are still people out there,” Mr. Bakula said, adding that the band’s historic significance has bred fans that still want to own all of its music.

The Beatles’ music has long been available on internet radio services such as Pandora Media Inc. and on satellite radio, but never before via on-demand services.

The Beatles have been the most prominent streaming holdout, preferring instead to remaster existing albums and boost their quality.

In 2010, the band allowed its catalogue to appear on Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.

The group also was a latecomer to the CD era, waiting until 1987 to issue its main body of work on a medium that the industry had embraced in the early to middle part of the decade.

By Hannah Karp And Amir Mizroch

With many thanks to The Australian

The Beatles Top 10 Streaming Hits

From Paul Cashmere at Noise 11

The Beatles allowed fans to hear their music via streaming services for the first time on Christmas Eve 2015 and already the first Beatles Streaming Top 10 has been compiled.

‘Come Together’ from The Beatles’ final studio album ‘Abbey Road’ is the most streamed song so far, according to a global survey of data by Spotify but surprisingly 65% of fans streaming The Beatles were under the age of 34.