It was 50 years ago today, the Beatles began to play, They’ve been going in and out of style, But they’ve guaranteed to raise a smile. So may I introduce to you, The act you’ve known for all these years,  John, Paul, George and Ringo

See what I did there 🙂  Did you pick up what I just put down?

The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI officially announced Friday the group will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1962 original release of the Beatles’ song “Love Me Do” with a new replica of that Parlophone Records single to hit the streets Oct. 22. The replica version will include the version with Ringo Starr on the drums, as the original single did.

The Beatles’ first Parlophone Records release with “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” on the flip side, was released on Oct. 5, 1962 as a 7-inch vinyl single with the label number R-4949. The new commemorative single’s audio was sourced from the 2009 mono remaster, the company said in announcing the new single.

I have over 600 albums from my days as a vinyl collector.  All in great condition but I must say, I do not listen to them very often.  Vinyl album sales were up nearly 44% – though at just 337,000 LPs sold, that represents just 0.3% of the total market.  Time to hook up the turntable again?

The CD remained comfortably the most popular format on which to buy an album in 2011 – but another strong year of growth for digital sales suggests it may not be for long.  Just over 86m albums were sold on CD in 2011, according to figures compiled by The Official Charts Company, representing 76% of the market.

However, the number of CD albums sold was down 12.6% compared to the previous year. Digital album sales meanwhile rose 26.6% to 26.6m, making up 23.5% of the market for albums in 2011.

Vinyl album sales were up nearly 44% – though at just 337,000 LPs sold, that represents just 0.3% of the total market.

So guess what? The Beatles remastered vinyl box set, first mentioned in 2009 and rumored increasingly more often this year, will be released Nov. 13, according to advance listings from two retailers.

So for $399 dollars you can get all of the original Beatles albums digitally remastered for the holidays.  Given how long it has taken to remaster them, I bet they sound awesome.

Happy holidays.

Webman