What if the Beatles never sold records?

[Loco Mo]

Like today - no one buys recordings any more because music is free on Spotify, Amazon, Pandora, Google, etc.

Also, minus vinyl records, we wouldn't have all the significant album covers to look at.  CDs have inserts but people listening free don't ever see those.

The Beatles would have to make their income via concerts.  There are a lot of people to pay in order to make concerts happen.  So, the pool of concert money to go around would have to be divided up among a lot of people, not just the Beatles.

I bet that John would not have made his early solo albums under today's conditions.  George probably wouldn't have made his electronic album either.  And Ringo - well, it seems doubtful he'd make as many as he did.  None of them were major sellers, I think.

I know the Beatles got tired of concerts (mainly John and George) so maybe the Beatles would have ended in 1965 or 66.  Paul probably would have went totally solo then.

What do you all think about this?  What would the Beatles experience be like in today's music world?

[nimrod]

[oldbrownshoe]

Without the 60s, the group's impact would have been dramatically less.
The Beatles needs the era far more than the era needed The Beatles.

The biggest group in world (.....and the biggest guitarist, the biggest singer-songwriter, and 2nd/3rd/4th biggest groups in the world) could only have emanated from the 60s.

[Bingo Bongo]

Like today - no one buys recordings any more because music is free on Spotify, Amazon, Pandora, Google, etc.

Aren't people buying Beiber, Taylor Swift, Beyonce or One Direction CD's? 

[Moogmodule]

There would seem to be little incentive for the Beatles or others to have worked on developing whole albums of quality material that worked as a consolidated purchase if fans were largely going to buy only the three or four best tracks.  So the incentive to develop LPs as their own art form would have been reduced. Obviously acts still release LPs /CDs today but I wonder if that's just a hangover from the culture of the album that developed in the 60s. If today's streaming and MP3 purchasing systems had been available back in the 60s the whole concept of LPs might have been dead in the water.

[Moogmodule]

I bet that John would not have made his early solo albums under today's conditions.  George probably wouldn't have made his electronic album either. 

It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.  ha2ha