US Website BlueBeat.com has been ordered to pay $950,000 for illegally selling Beatles tracks it claimed to be “psycho-acoustic simulations” .
Back in 2009, the BlueBeat website started selling the tracks for 25c (US) which is a third of the cost of an iTunes track. The Beatles had yet to license music for digital release at the time. BlueBeat instantly were hit with several copyright infringement lawsuits.
BlueBeat’s company owner Hank Risan claimed that the tracks were “psycho-acoustic simulations” , a process where tracks are recreated to sound like they would if they were performed live. So in other words, they were recreations tracks that sounded bang on like the originals.
The judge for the case claimed the explanation to be “obscure and undefined pseudo-scientific language [that] appears to be a long-winded way of describing ‘sampling’.” BlueBeat was ordered to pay $950,000 and are forbidden to sell any music from labels that are suing them.
Other artists songs were also sold illegally via the website, including Radiohead, and Coldplay.
