Stones Roll Out Online Tunes
The Rolling Stones‘ entire catalogue — more than 500 songs — is
available, legally, on the Internet for the first time today.
The online service Rhapsody secured an exclusive deal with the
band that stretches through the end of the month: All songs the
Stones recorded since 1971 and released on EMI’s Virgin Records —
Sticky Fingers on — are available for downloading and
burning for seventy-nine cents each. All songs recorded before
1971, owned by the Stones’ notoriously close-fisted former label
ABKCO, are available for streaming but not downloading.
The Stones, along with the Beatles and Michael Jackson, had been
one of the last holdouts against legal digital music services. Once
the deal with Rhapsody expires at the end of the month, the Stones
will also offer the post-1971 tunes through other online music
stores, like Apple’s iTunes and AOL’s MusicNet.