Entire Lennon catalogue to be online

LOS ANGELES - The entire solo catalogue of the late rock icon John Lennon will be made available for internet download for the first time in December, his record label said today.

It is the first time one of the former Beatles' complete solo works has been made commercially available on legitimate online music services, EMI Music said.

The Lennon material will be sold by such online music services as Napster, Rhapsody, MSN Music and Yahoo Music Unlimited.

One music site conspicuously excluded from the digital release is iTunes due to a trademark dispute between its parent company, Apple Computer Inc, and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. over competing names of the two entities.

A newly released two-CD greatest-hits collection, Working Class Hero, was already posted in digital format for purchase on various internet music sites starting on Monday, EMI said. The remainder of Lennon's solo collection will be available for download starting December 5 in Britain and December 6 in the United States.

A select number of Lennon tracks also will be offered in the near future for digital download directly to cell phones, EMI said.

Working Class Hero has hardly been a commercial blockbuster in brick-and-mortar stores. The double-album set entered the Billboard 200 pop chart at No 135 and has sold just 32,000 copies since its release five weeks ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

But in a statement from the record label, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, said she was happy her late husband's music would now be available to a new generation of digital music fans.

"New technology is something he always embraced and this is something he would have loved," she said.

EMI is in talks with Apple Corps about offering Beatles music for purchase as digital downloads in the future, an EMI spokesman said. To date, none of the Fab Four's recordings have been made available on a legal download service.

The digital release of Lennon's songs roughly coincides with two notable red-letter dates -- his 65th birthday last month and the 25th anniversary of his murder by a deranged fan outside his New York apartment building on December 8, 1980.

- REUTERS