APPLE iTUNES PUTS THE BEATLES FOR SALE IN RUSSIA

It's a shame Steve Jobs didn't live to see it, but Apple [AAPL] this morning achieved something that would have seemed utterly impossible not too long ago -- it put The Beatles on sale in Russia as it expanded iTunes into numerous new countries.


The front page of Russia's all-new iTunes Store.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

This is a much bigger deal than it might seem to younger readers. The Beatles became the music for young dissident Russians during the Communist era, despite being banned by the Party. This continued long after the band broke up in 1970.

The extent of Cold War Beatlemania was such that underground music pressing plants would press copies of those hard to find but much in demand Beatles albums on X-rays, so the discs would carry X-ray images of bones and body parts. Fans called this form of music distribution "Music on the bones".

The underground market in Beatles bootlegs was expensive. In some parts of Russia a single album cost 200 Roubles -- the equivalent of a month's pay at that time. iTunes today offers the albums at around 199 Roubles, though the average wage is now  23.6 thousand Roubles.

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That Hippie Penny Lane