The Rolling Stones, one of the last marquee holdouts against online music distribution, have finally agreed to sell their music online, according to record label EMI Music.
The venerable rock band’s appearance online is both a signal of the increasingly rapid mainstreaming of digital music and a welcome relief to online music companies, which have felt the absence of the Rolling Stones and a few other major bands, such as the Beatles, as a major hole in their appeal to consumers.
The band’s music will be launched Monday exclusively on RealNetworks’ Rhapsody subscription service, as part of a new promotion that will also see the Rhapsody service distributed and promoted heavily in Best Buy retail stores around the United States. Analysts said the extensive offline promotion was itself a critical sign of the digital medium’s maturation.
Unlike some of the other well-publicized holdouts–most notably the Beatles–the Stones did not have serious objections to their music being put online. But having a catalogue that spanned nearly 40 years, most of it recorded before digital music rights were even a glimmer in a lawyer’s eye, meant that there were complicated contractual issues to work out between the band and its various record labels.
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