
 
 
 
 When Apple Inc. announced last week that the Beatles’ catalog would at long last be available for legal downloading on iTunes, many skeptics groused that the two entities had come together too late: Everyone who cares about the group’s music long ago found a way to store it on their PCs, laptops or MP3 players. 
 
 Apparently not. 
 
 Apple announced Tuesday that 450,000 Beatles albums and 2 million individual tracks were downloaded during the first week they went up online. That translates to well more than $8 million spent on Beatles downloads out of the gate, using the single album download price of $12.99 and $1.29 per song. It doesn’t take into account several double albums priced at $19.99 or the digital Beatles box set that iTunes offers for $149. 
 
 At the same time the Beatles finally joined the digital world, Amazon began discounting the remastered physical CDs that were released last year, with individual albums now selling for $7.99, double sets for $11.99 and $12.99 and the 16-CD stereo box set priced at $129.99, making the tangible versions cheaper than the virtual ones. Consequently, six Beatles titles are in the Top 100 of Amazon’s ranking of its bestselling music titles as of Tuesday. 
 
 -- Randy Lewis ||||| The initial Beatles sales figures are in: More than 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs were sold on iTunes worldwide, according to Apple, since the Beatles catalog was made available Tuesday (Nov. 16). In U.S. the best-selling album was "Abbey Road" and best-selling song was "Here Comes the Sun." 
 
 
 
 Of that tally, U.S. album sales totaled 119,000 units, which included 13,000 digital box sets, while individual digital track sales reached 1.4 million, according to industry sources. Each digital box set included 13 studio albums, the two-volume "Past Masters" compilation and the "Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964" concert film. Sources say the U.S. album sales tally of 119,000 counts each box set as one unit, while Apple's worldwide album sales tally counts each box set as multiple sales units, although it wasn't immediately clear how many units each box set accounted for. 
 
 Beatles Catalog Finally Coming to iTunes, Apple Announces 
 
 The Fab Four's debut-week sales on iTunes compare favorably with the first-week sales of previous iTunes holdouts. When Led Zeppelin's catalog made its digital debut in November 2007, the band generated total U.S. digital album sales of 47,000 units, which included sales of 33,000 units of the two-volume hits compilation "Mothership," which was released the same week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Led Zeppelin's first-week individual track sales totaled 300,000, according to SoundScan. 
 
 
 
 But these numbers also show that digital music consumers aren't necessarily holding their breath to pounce on buying music when holdouts finally join the fray. Led Zeppelin's entire catalog may have generated digital track sales of 300,000, but Eminem's digital track "Not Afraid" alone sold 379,000 units in the its debut week ended May 9, according to Nielsen SoundScan. 
 
 
 
 First-week digital track sales for superstar acts this year typically ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 per title, while digital album sales ranged anywhere from 40,000 to 278,000 for Taylor Swift's blockbuster third album "Speak Now." 
 
 
 
 The Beatles' debut on iTunes was accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, including prominent homepage placement on iTunes and TV spots that aired during Sunday's American Music Awards broadcast on ABC, Sunday Night Football on NBC and other prime-time programming. 
 
 
 
 Sources say the Beatles/iTunes media campaign is expected to kick into high gear this for Black Friday, with expanded TV advertising in the U.S. and full-page ads in the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times." 
 
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– The Beatles had an impressive debut week on iTunes. They sold 2 million individual songs worldwide (the top seller being Here Comes the Sun) and 450,000 albums (with Abbey Road on top) after the catalog went up for sale, reports Billboard. That amounts to more than $8 million, notes the LA Times. For a yardstick, Taylor's Swift's blockbuster Speak Now album sold 278,000 digital albums in its first week. The Beatles/iTunes mashup benefited from a huge ad blitz, and it's expected to get even heavier this week.