Gennaro Castaldo Watch: A big announcement

With nearly the entire world fawning over a man getting engaged to a woman, it's left to HMV's head of occasion Gennaro Castaldo to welcome the appearance of a few more tracks onto iTunes:

“This could prove a huge landmark event — the holy grail that the digital music industry has been waiting for,” said Gennaro Castaldo of HMV."

Really? You seriously believe there's a significant number of people whose decision whether to move to non-physical music or not is determined entirely by whether they have to rip a Beatles CD or can download it?

iTunes seems to be doing pretty nicely without The Beatles on it, so it's far from clear why this would be the holy grail. Most commercial bands who could be are already on iTunes, so it's not likely McCartney is going to lead a thousand more acts onto the platform. It's no more a holy grail than the news that Lowestoft Asda have got iceberg lettuce back in stock this evening.

In a bid to try and bark up some excitement, Gennaro thinks of the charts:

“If the Beatles have agreed to allow any of their songs to be downloaded individually then you could have a situation where the entire top 10 or 20 of the singles chart could be made up of their classic tunes for weeks to come."

For weeks to come? That'd be the market of people who have waited seven years for The Beatles to come to iTunes, but are going to leave it two or three weeks until they get round to buying them.