The Bootleg is here

From the New Zealand iTunes Store 

The Beatles’ “Bootleg Recordings 1963” is due out Tuesday on iTunes. Over in New Zealand it’s already Tuesday, so the recordings are available there. From our readers over there we have so far got these comments: “Saturday Club Jan 26 Some Other Guy is an upgrade, Love me Do is complete and an upgrade. A Taste Of Honey, Misery and Do You Want To Know A Secret outtakes are in STEREO! Money is undubbed. Bad To Me sounds much cleaner!”

Of course, the comparisons have been made with the previous versions of this material on underground bootleg releases. So we may now confirm that they have indeed used their own master tapes as sources for the outtakes. On every underground release, these same studio recordings have been in mono.

Here’s the iTunes page of this release for New Zealand.

23 Responses

  1. wardo says:

    I'm very curious to see what this will sell for. If it's 15.99 in New Zealand dollars, that works out to a little more than 13 American dollars, which is promising.

  2. arthur barry says:

    These were NOT pilled from what you say are "Masters, the EMI tracks..The 3/4" Masters for some were not there, unless they turned up…Stereo?

  3. James Peet says:

    Very happy that the January 1963 recording of "Love Me Do" is complete, as it's possibly my favourite version.

    Excited to hear what other delights there are and how much their sound is better than the boots.

  4. Brian Fried says:

    Interesting that, for 1963 recordings, studio outtakes from the second album aren't present.

  5. Ariel C says:

    What the hell? They pulled this release already?! It's gone!

  6. Unknown says:

    this list is much shorter and different from what was shown previously on your site. are they offering smaller packages, instead of one big one?

  7. Unknown says:

    I can't open it either.

  8. James Peet says:

    Any news about the UK yet?

  9. David Calhoun says:

    And now they're gone… Waiting up to see if they'll be offered in the US store at midnight.

    If it'l going up, it should be available here: itunes.apple.com/us/album/beatles-bootleg-recordings/id778642269

  10. James Peet says:

    Nothing yet! This is silly.

  11. Unknown says:

    Nothing here in the US I'm not happy

  12. Foxx says:

    This comment has been removed by the author.

  13. Foxx says:

    This comment has been removed by the author.

  14. Foxx says:

    In Holland, the download became visible at 1am. I could not reach it, perhaps too many tried at that time, or perhaps they squeezed the amount of band width. After 30 mins I gave up (after all, it was 1.30 am, then…..). Tried again this morning at 6 am but the link was pulled already. Grab your copy while it's there!

  15. Tony says:

    The whole thing is shameful. It makes no sense to me that they would go to all the trouble of preparing these tracks, sourcing the best quality and then taking them down.

  16. David Calhoun says:

    Yeah, this is really disappointing. . Hope it got out there enough that it'll end up on torrent sites…

  17. Nicki says:

    I watched Good Ol' Freda at the weekend.
    The contrast between how fans were treated then (free flexi discs, letters replied to) and now (cynical deletion of collectors items after minutes) is shameful.
    Don't they realise that they are just pushing people towards the bootlegs? I want to pay for this!

  18. David Calhoun says:

    Past 1am here in the US and nothing. Got to listen to previews in the New Zealand store and that's it. F*#$ off, Apple & Apple

  19. Foxx says:

    Well, the consolation is that the Dylan-copyright-scheme-recordings (only 100 – 200 distributed officially) are widely available. No doubt this will happen here, as well. But I would have been happy to pay for it. Initially I even thought The Beatles would do this relatively decent, issueing a low-key album without any fanfare. Now it leaves just a bad taste. What a cynical charade.

  20. David Calhoun says:

    The New Zealand page can still be reached via Google cache. Was able to download all the audio previews at least, at reverse engineered the artwork URL to get the high res version of the cover. Use this when it inevitably gets pirated..

    a2.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Music6/v4/cf/4d/a5/cf4da501-fed5-4095-8d9f-738da230a33e/13UAEIM36543.1200×1200-75.jpg

  21. Anonymous says:

    What a debacle. Well, can't wait for the bootleg with these songs.

  22. Unknown says:

    When I first checked this morning at about 7:30 A.M. PST, the release was not available. However, when I checked again at about 9:00 A.M. PST, the release was available, so I quickly bought and downloaded it. At $39.99, it's not cheap!

  23. Foxx says:

    What are they thinking? Last month I bought On The Air (BBC2) and bought the repackage of BBC1, because I considered the audio a nice improvement from the 1994 edition (which I also have, like pretty much everything else). For 44 Euro's I got these 2 2cd's, nicely packaged, together in some little box or what is it called.h bookletswith interesting liner notes and recording notes for each track. Nice pictures, too.

    Now they want me to pay 40 Euro's and all I get is a series of digital files, no cd's, no booklets, no pictures. Until now I have bought all legitimate releases, that I am aware of, but now I am considering a torrent download, which without a doubt will show up shortly.

Leave a Reply to TonyCancel reply