I know plenty of people who like them enough to download invidual songs or maybe an album or two, but who don't currently own their entire discography. And remember that there's a whole generation of kids who are just now discovering the Beatles for the first time.
Do people really think ITunes is the only way of downloading media?
Of course not. But it's probably the easiest, most convenient and most popular. And we're talking about the Beatles here. The epitome of mainstream popular music. The bulk of these downloads are probably not from people who regularly DL lots of music. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of the general population thinks of music very differently than the way most of us here do.
No. Like I said in another thread about this topic, I know a good number of people who still only have records and have been thinking of upgrading for awhile now. This gave them an excuse.
Hmm... I'm not sure I'd call the switch from vinyl to digital as an "upgrade"
Again this proves how viable the Beatles are 40 years later and destroys that other thread. Yes everything fades in time but anomaly like the Beatles is a rare feat.
Totally. I was listening to Billy Joel on Howard Stern the other day and Billy was talking about classical music and people like Beethoven and Mozart and how when the music itself is good enough, it will span across generations and will not be limited to the context of its own time, which he followed up by saying "200 years from now, they'll still be listening to The Beatles".