Norwegian Beatles Podcasts Taken Down, Apple Corps. Says Downloads Are "Not Authorized"

Those Norwegian Beatles podcasts, noted as the first time the Fab Four's music has been available as a legal download, have been taken down after the podcasts broke some obscure Norwegian broadcasting law. The NRK, or the Norway Broadcasting Co., said, "The podcast is not available at the moment. Please check back for updates." Only the podcasts for the Beatles Please Please Me and With The Beatles were posted before the hammer of international law dropped. According to the NRK, Norwegian radio law states that "NRK can not podcast programs with foreign music if the radio program was broadcast more than four weeks ago." Since the original broadcasts of "Our Daily Beatles" was in 2007, this turned out to be an issue.

So why doesn't the NRK just, you know, rebroadcast the series so they can post the podcasts? "This is a question people have asked several times already. We could have done it, but choose not to," the NRK said in a long explanation and breakdown of what went wrong with the Beatles deal. Plus, the Beatles music comes under a deal that NRK has with the IFPI, which represents international record companies, and as luck would have it NRK and IFPI's contract expired December 31, 2008.

Even if the NRK ties up all its loose ends and reposts its Beatles podcasts, the threat of Apple Corps. still awaits. "It has recently been reported that a Norwegian broadcasting company, NRK, will make Beatles music available for download via a series of podcasts.  These podcasts are not authorized by Apple Corps Ltd," the company said in a statement. So after a blink of optimism, it remains that no legal downloads of the Beatles music are available online.

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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