The Beatles Sell 2,000,000 Songs in Their First Week on iTunes

The Beatles Sell 2,000,000 Songs in Their First Week on iTunes

One week ago, the entire Beatles catalogue was made available on Apple’s online music store iTunes. Now, the numbers are in: according to Billboard, the Beatles sold more than 450,000 albums and over two million individual songs in the first week on iTunes.

The best selling album in the U.S. was Abbey Road while the best-selling song was Here Comes the Sun.

The impressive numbers come as no surprise as the Beatles took over the iTunes charts in the first day of availability, with eleven of their albums surging to the iTunes top 25 albums list.

Getting there was no easy task, however. Back in 1978, the Beatles’ corporation Apple Corps sued Apple Inc. (then Apple Computer) for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981, but it dragged on for decades, reaching pinnacle in 2003, with Apple’s launch of iTunes, when Apple Corps once again sued Apple Computer, claiming it has violated the agreement not to distribute music. Finally, on February 2007 the two companies settled their trademark dispute, but it took three more years for the Beatles’ catalog to reach iTunes. Judging by the impressive sales, the long wait paid off for both companies in the end.