The Beatles have sold more than two millions songs during their first week on iTunes, it emerged today.
The Fab Four’s entire catalogue of 13 albums was made available on Apple’s online music store last week.
They sold more than 450,000 albums containing two million songs in the first seven days, with eleven LPs surging into the iTunes top 25 album list, according to Billboard magazine.
Abbey Road was the top-selling album and the sixth highest in the country for the week ending November 22.
The best-selling individual song was Here Comes the Sun.
Other albums from the group are known to have infiltrated the top 10 and the top 100, led mostly by compilations like the Box Set, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970.
Billboard said the iTunes debut of the Fab Four compared favourably to those of other bands that had also resisted joining the digital music revolution.
Rock band Led Zeppelin’s catalog made its digital debut in November 2007, generating total U.S. digital album sales of 47,000 units and 300,000 individual songs in the first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The release of Beatles songs online on November 16 marked the end of decades of legal rows over distribution rights between Apple, the Beatles management company and record label EMI.
They settled their dispute in February 2007 but it took three more years for the Beatles catalogue to reach iTunes.
The 40 year-old classics failed to beat new material from the likes of R&B singer Rihanna, and the latest effort by the cast of hit TV musical comedy ‘Glee’.
According to Apple, Rihanna’s new album ‘Loud’ was the best iTunes album seller in the United States last week, followed by ‘The Christmas Album’ of cover versions of holiday songs by the ‘Glee’ cast.
Rihanna ahead of the Beatles…bah, what is wrong with the world?