Tag Archives: digital music

Max Mathews Passes Away At 84

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Max Mathews (1926 - 2011).

Max Mathews (1926 - 2011).

The man who was unanimously regarded as the father of digital music passed away last week. Born in 1926, Max Mathews was a relentless innovator in the world of computer-generated music.

Employed at Bell Laboratories, he both created devices and wrote software applications of which the most popular was probably “Music” (1957). That software basically allowed an IBM 704 mainframe computer to play short jams.

Mathews passed away at his home in San Francisco on the morning of April the 21st. I have embedded a short video below in which he talks about the future of musical instruments. This video was actually shot last year at SF MusicTech Summit – it is one of his final major public appearances.

How Much Did The Beatles Sell On Their First Week In The iTunes Store?

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Sales Of Beatles Music Through iTunes Have Been Excellent. Their Most Purchased Album Has Been “Abbey Road”, While The Most Sought-After Track Has Been “Here Comes The Sun”.

Sales Of Beatles Music Through iTunes Have Been Excellent. Their Most Purchased Album Has Been “Abbey Road”, While The Most Sought-After Track Has Been “Here Comes The Sun”.

“How well would the Beatles’ music sell if it became available digitally?”

That was a recurrent question for years on end. But now that the Beatles are finally featured on the iTunes Store, the time for speculations has ended.

The results are quite impressive. The band sold 450,000 albums and 2,000,000 individual tracks on its first week on iTunes alone.

To give you an idea of how good these numbers are, Led Zeppelin sold just 300,000 songs on the week its music went digital. Continue reading →