Apple Records and Zapple Records[edit]

Main article: Apple Records

From 1968 onwards, new releases by the Beatles were issued by Apple Records, although the
copyright remained with EMI, and Parlophone/Capitol catalogue numbers continued to be used.
Apple releases of recordings by artists other than the Beatles, however, used a new set of numbers,
and the copyrights were held mostly by Apple Corps Ltd. More than a "vanity label", Apple Records
developed an eclectic roster of their own, releasing records by artists as diverse as Indian sitar
guru Ravi Shankar, Welsh easy listening songstress Mary Hopkin, the power-pop band Badfinger,
classical music composer John Tavener, soul singer Billy Preston, folk singer James Taylor, R&B
singer Doris Troy, New York underground rock band Elephant's Memory, original bad girl of rock and
roll Ronnie Spector, rock singer Jackie Lomax, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and even London's Radha
Krsna Temple.
Since Apple's inception, McCartney and Lennon had been very interested in launching a budget-line
label to issue what would essentially be known three decades later as "audio books". In October
1968, Apple hired Barry Miles, who co-owned the Indica bookshop with John Dunbar and Peter
Asher, to manage the proposed spoken-word label. The initial idea of Zapple Records was that it
would release avant-garde and spoken word records at a reduced price that would be comparable to
that of a paperback novel. While the idea looked good on paper, the reality was that when the few
records actually put out by Zapple finally made it into the shops, they were priced like any other fullpriced music album.[44] Zapple Records was started on 3 February 1969, but after Klein was brought
in to run Apple Corps' affairs, it was closed down after just two releases: Lennon's and Yoko
Ono's Life with the Lions, and Harrison's Electronic Sound.[45]