Beatles podcasts pulled in Norway

A SERIES of podcasts featuring the entire Beatle's back catalogue has been removed from a Norwegian website.

Earlier this week, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation began posting the podcasts, which feature 212 songs and commentary about the band, on its site nrk.no.

But today it was forced to remove them after Apple Corps Ltd, which owns the rights to the Beatles' back catalogue, said the podcasts hadn't been authorised.

A statement issued by the company said: "It has recently been reported that a Norwegian broadcasting company, NRK, will make Beatles music available for download via a series of podcasts. These podcasts are not authorized by Apple Corps Ltd."

A message on the NRK website says: "Due to terms still under negotiation, our own lawyers have advised us to pull back the podcasts containing The Beatles music. This is not how we would like things to be. But we can't break our agreements."

The podcasts - "Vår daglige Beatles" or "Our Daily Beatles", chronologically tell a short story of every Beatles original 212 releases, along with the song in its entirety and was first broadcast in 2007.

NBK thought it was entitled to broadcast the series again after it recently signed a new deal with TONO, which administers copyrights for music in Norway.

But it discovered that the licensing deal only allows rebroadcasting of content originally aired within the last four weeks.