Hi Friends,

So The Beatles (EMI) finally made a deal with iTunes to sell all their music. It's massive and seems to have taken over the headlines with any relation to music and popular culture. They've already sold 450k albums and over 2 million singles.

I work in the entertainment & media industry - so have the working knowledge of what media costs are - and they are high. That being said I would not even begin to guess as to what this total world-wide campaign is worth. Here's a quick bullet point list of some of the media I've seen for this monumental partnership.

• Homepage placement on Apple.com
• Home page rotators on iTunes Music Store in all territories
• Home page banners, bricks and display ads on iTunes Music Store in all territories
• Radio ads
• Television ads
• Print ads
• Apple store-fronts
• Music playing in-stores
• Facebook Social Ads
• Tweets galore *The Beatles are following me on Twitter now :)
• Music playing on call waiting for apple (I heard 2 albums while waiting)
• Social Media support

These are only the paid components of the campaign surrounding this launch and don't include the content rub-off. This blog alone just got them 3 extra impressions.

My favourite thing about this is that the world gets to re-discover The Beatles all over again or for the first time. It's a win win for everyone.

So now that music sales have gone through the roof who will be the next artist to do a deal with iTunes? Is it going to be Radiohead, Bob Segar or Led Zeppelin?

Here's a couple of beauties I think might sell...

• Bob Segar - 'Night Moves'
• Radiohead - 'Karma Police'
• Led Zeppelin - 'Tangerine'

Thanks for reading/listening,

Gregg Stewart

PS - sorry about the formatting on this one - I am at a loss:(