fab four online

Seattle, Nov. 16 (AP): Beatles for Sale is finally for sale on iTunes — along with the rest of the Fab Four’s albums, from Please Please Me to Revolver to Abbey Road.

The Beatles had been the most prominent holdout from iTunes and other online music services. Today, Apple Inc. said its iTunes store will start selling downloads of songs and albums from the group, in an agreement with the Beatles’s recording label, EMI Group Ltd., and its management company, Apple Corps Ltd.

Apple will sell 13 remastered Beatles studio albums, the two-volume Past Masters set and the classic Red and Blue collections. People can buy individual songs for $1.29 apiece or download entire albums, at $12.99 for a single album and $19.99 for a double.

Until today, Apple Corps had resisted selling Beatles music as online downloads. The situation was exacerbated by a long-running trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps.

It was resolved in 2007 when the companies agreed on joint use of the apple logo and name, and many people saw that as paving the way for an agreement for online access to Beatles songs.

With the Beatles now in Apple’s music store, the number of holdouts has dwindled. Garth Brooks, Kid Rock and AC/DC are among the remaining artists who refuse to sell their work through Apple.

Until now, to listen to Beatles songs on iPods, you would have to obtain a CD and “rip” an online version of it — or find someone who already has, legalities aside.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, couldn’t resist celebrating the Beatles’s arrival on iTunes with an obvious quip. “It has been a long and winding road to get here,” he said in a statement, referencing the song The Long and Winding Road from the Beatles’s 1970 Let it Be album.