Here come the sales: Fans buy 2M Beatles songs on iTunes

The music of the Beatles saw strong if not world-changing sales during its first week of availability on iTunes, according to sales numbers that Apple provided to Billboard.

The Beatles were the final big holdout from iTunes and from digital sales in general. (The very last CD that I purchased, and will probably ever purchase, was The Beatles’ White Album — which I promptly copied onto my hard drive.) The band’s arrival on iTunes last Tuesday was heralded by plenty of media coverage, not to mention a big advertising push from Apple.

The Beatles have now sold 2 million individual songs and 450,000 albums on iTunes worldwide, Billboard reports. Those sales included 1.4 million songs and 119,000 albums in the United States. The best-selling album was Abbey Road, and the best-selling song was “Here Comes the Sun”.

In comparison, another late arrival to iTunes, Led Zeppelin, sold 300,000 songs and 47,000 albums in the US during the week after its digital launch in November 2007. New songs from superstar acts normally sell between 100,000 and 300,000 in their first week, Billboard says.

So even though there are still plenty of fans willing to buy Beatles music, the pent-up demand didn’t push the band to the very top of the charts. Still, it’s cool to see Abbey Road climbing past music from new acts. The iTunes Top Album chart currently places it at number 17, behind Kanye West and Ke$ha, but ahead of popular artists like Cee Lo and Pink.

[via All Things Digital]