Attempt to put Beatles tracks on the Internet for free scuppered.

Byline: ANI

London, January 7 (ANI): Norwegian national broadcaster NRK's attempt to put the entire Beatles back catalogue on the Internet for free has been scuppered, as it breaches an agreement with rights holders.

The plan was to posting 212 tracks online in a series of podcasts, with each song preceded by a three-minute talk about its history.

NRK is said to have a deal with TONO, which owns rights to work by Norwegian artists, allowing the broadcaster to make all the material in its archive available in a podcast.

However, the record company IFPI, which owns the rights to the Beatles back catalogue, had allowed that only for programmes aired in the last month.

"We had a very good and open agreement with the Norwegian composers and people forgot that we need to have the same agreement with the record companies," the Telegraph quoted technology adviser for NRK, Oyvind Solstad, as saying.

"We could have aired the whole thing and then podcast it, but I think the record company would have tried to stop it anyway. There's something in the agreement where they can exclude certain artists," Solstad added.

NRK is a national broadcaster funded by a licence fee, which is currently trying to open up decades of archives to the public.

Solstad added: "We want to share as much as possible of our archives with the public. We can't do that if we can only podcast things that have been aired in the past four weeks. We need a better agreement. People's media habits have changed, and young people want things on their ipods."

He, however, said that he had "small hopes" that the Beatles material would eventually be released. (ANI)

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