Norway Offers Entire Beatles Discography

This morning I had the following conversation:

The Consumerist: Want to download every Beatles track made, legally?
Me: Not particularly.
The Consumerist: [NRKbeta.no via BoingBoing]
Me: ???

What the recently sold-off consumer advocacy blog was trying to alert me to was the fact that a Norwegian broadcasting company has, thanks to a recent deal, gotten a chance to play the prolific back-catalog of The Beatles in podcasts that, because of this deal, contain less than 70% actual music.

A pair of know-it-alls illuminate listeners on the backstories of all songs in three-minute blurbs—with the songs following. But in Norwegian. This means all us unglaciated folk are out of luck, unless NPR attempts to issue a handy English version of the series. There are currently about 14 episodes in the feed, although the target is 212 by the end of this month. Weirdly enough, retailers like iTunes, while swarming with Beatles cover bands, fail to carry any of the actual band’s hits. Norway: 1, Steve Jobs: Still pending.