One of the few bands not to release their music as mp3 downloads are The Beatles. At this point I'm not sure that any other major label band hasn't done it. When it was announced that The Beatles were finally releasing their music digitally on December 8 of 2009 I think most people just assumed that this meant that their music was going to be available but that is not the case, instead they have gone another way: The Beatles USB Flash Drive.

The Beatles USB stick contains what amounts to the Beatles in Stereo Box Set except obviously in a far different format than the 17 discs included in the stereo box set. This Beatles USB stick that you can easily hold in your hand contains all of the same elements as that stereo box set.

In actuality it contains all of the remastered Beatles stereo tracks in that box set two times because it has 320kbps mp3s and 24bit FLACs. I am certain you are familiar with mp3s (and the 320kbps mp3s in this USB are of very high quality) but what about the 24bit FLAC files, what does that mean? Simply put these FLAC files are considered to be "lossless" which means they do not have any loss of sound quality like mp3s do. And since these FLACs are actually 24bit instead of the 16 bit files that are contained on CDs, they are of better sound quality than compact discs.

This means that The Beatles USB memory stick now contains the best quality version of The Beatles stereo remasters! That might change in the future if they decide to release these remasters on Blu-Ray or DVD but for now this is the audiophile holy grail as far as The Beatles music in stereo.

How about the original mono mixes? Sadly these are not included on this USB memory stick. You still have to buy The Beatles in Mono remastered box set to hear their music in mono.