The Beatles could have all their songs on iTunes, but not the way you might think: via a podcast describing the story behind each song, released by a Norwegian broadcasting company.

NRK is podcasting its segment called "Our Daily Beatles" that chronologically tells a three-minute story of every Beatles song ever written -- 212 of them -- along with the song in its entirety. NRK offers its podcast of the segment here.

According to its website, NRK says it has procured the rights to publish podcasts of all its previously-broadcast radio and television programs that contain less than 70 percent music.

While not an ideal way to download the entire Beatles catalog specifically for the music, the podcast is free.

Apple has been negotiating with Apple Corps and the various owners of the Beatles' catalog to offer the music on iTunes. Last word was in November, when Paul McCartney said that talks broke down.

Thanks, Kenken!

Update: Unfortunately, the podcast has been pulled offline, citing legal concerns.

All day on December 25, TUAW presents "Now What?" We've got first steps and recommendations for all the Apple gifts you found under the tree today. Happy holidays!

Hopefully a lot of you reached into your Christmas stockings and pulled out a lump of coal fully-loaded iTunes gift card. In case you haven't been presented with one of these gems before, they come in denominations of $10, $25, $50, and $100 in the USA -- check your country's Apple website for the availability of cards in your local currency.

Turning this card into tunes or iPhone apps is simple:

1) Check the back of the card first. If you see a list of numbers and letters instead of the words "Scratch off gently with coin", then your card has been used before. Take the giver off of your Christmas list for next year.

2) If the scratch-off material is intact, grab a coin and gently scratch off the material to reveal the code.

3) Launch iTunes. Make sure you're logged into your iTunes account and not somebody else's.

4) In the upper right part of the iTunes screen you'll see an area marked "Quick Links" (see screenshot at left). Click on the "Redeem" link.

5) You're almost there. A screen appears that will ask you to enter the code exactly as it appears. Note that if you mistype even one number or letter, the card will be rejected, so make sure you're reading the letters and number properly.

6) Click the "Redeem" button. You may want to read the Terms & Conditions, but I seriously doubt it. There's more legalese in that document than you'd find in a bank bailout plan.

7) If everything has gone as planned at this point, you'll have a credit in your account. Exactly how much money you have to play with will be listed just to the left of your iTunes account name in the upper right side of the iTunes window.

8) Buy tunes and apps until you're filled with the joy of the holidays!

What! Another internet radio player for the iPhone? Yes, Pocket Tunes [App store link] does play internet radio in a pretty crowded field of similar iPhone/touch apps, but this little player has some unique attributes.

Pocket Tunes, which is also available for Windows Mobile and Palm phones, has excellent audio quality, and a nice, but not overwhelmingly large, selection of stations. You can add your own stations of course, and Pocket Tunes plays more audio formats than most of the other players out there, including aacPlus v1, aacPlus v2, Shoutcast, RTSP, and the usual suspects like MP3, AAC and WMA.

There are a few things that set Pocket Tunes apart from the competition. The GUI is pretty, not just a jumble of text, and the app contains a web browser so you can surf while listening to streaming music, something you simply can't do with other radio streamers. The browser can't see your Safari bookmarks, and you can't make your own, but listening to music and surfing the web is certainly better than listening to music and not surfing. The browser does have a link for the Google search engine, so getting to a website is not too painful.

You can also connect to the iTunes Store to buy any music you've listened to, and Pocket Tunes remembers stations that you have heard and caches them without your having to save them.

The audio quality of this app is quite good, and I got reasonably fast load and buffering times even using the EDGE network. I even tried to listen to music while driving, but when I plug in my car iPod adapter cord to the iPhone, I just get my regular playlists. I could have used the headphone out on the phone into the mini plug input on the car, but I didn't have the proper cable. Note to self: always bring the proper cables.

Pocket Tunes is $9.99, and competes against some fine free apps like AOL Radio and Flycast, and some apps that aren't free like Tuner [App Store link] and Wunder Radio [App Store link] which are both loaded with features for $5.99. Still, Pocket Tunes works very well, and unlike all the other entrants (except Flycast), it will let you read this review while listening to your favorite stations.

I haven't run the numbers thoroughly, but there's a team consensus here that iTunes library management and synchronization questions occupy high slots in the top 10 list of frequent questions to Ask TUAW and our tip line. With multiple machines, iPods/iPhones and massive libraries of media, keeping everything shipshape can be a real challenge.

Past posts have discussed several options for sharing and syncing, including products like Syncopation, myTuneSync, TuneRanger and Mojo -- and one item that keeps showing up in the list is SuperSync, mentioned by Mat here. It may not be the most attractive tool for the job, but reports are that it handles the task with aplomb (though it's a good idea to back up your library first).

SuperSync is discounted 50% today via MacZot, at $14.95 for a pair of licenses (allowing you to sync 2 machines); if library cleanup is on your holiday to-do list, it might be a good last-second purchase. We'll aim for a TUAW Faceoff on the various library sync and management tools early in the new year.

TouchMeme notes that the App Store has changed layout to separate free and paid applications, perhaps in response to developer grumbling about competition in a crowded market.

Free apps and paid apps now occupy sidebars to the right and left, respectively, of a major category index page. The center still allows you to sort the results by release date, name, or popularity (which doesn't appear to work yet: it only displays an alphabetical list). The separation of free and paid apps brings iTunes more closely in line with the mobile App Store experience. The changes affect every category except Games.

The concerns, though, of the Iconfactory's Craig Hockenberry (who earlier this week published an open letter to Steve Jobs detailing his frustration with marketing iPhone apps) may not be entirely assuaged. He argues that the price appeal of 99-cent apps (which may not be supported by the data) stifles the development of larger, more expensive apps that earn less prominent placement in the App Store.

The issues of price popularity and developer ROI aren't exactly solved by this furniture rearrangement, but perhaps it will let more high-quality apps bubble to the top of the Paid App charts. Otherwise, Apple might yet see the fleshy part of Hockenberry's palm.

[Via AppleInsider.]

Despite the presence of a checkbox to "keep iTunes library organized" in the application's preferences, the fact remains that iTunes tracks -- coming from a plethora of sources and of varying vintage, and sometimes numbering in the thousands -- are a black hole of bad metadata. Track and performer names may be wrong or missing (the dreaded "Track 01" and my favorite band, Unknown Artist, are frequently seen); other details may be off-base, and as for album art... well, let's just say that I don't use Cover Flow that much, and not because I don't like the way it looks; it's just that the wide stretches of empty covers are depressing.

There's some help on the way from TuneUp; the formerly Windows-only iTunes companion is now available for the Mac, with a free version that 'cleans' up to 500 tracks and a paid/subscription Premium license ($19.95 onetime or $11.95/annual) with unlimited scrubbing bubble power.

I decided to give TuneUp a trial run on the most confused, mixed-up section of my iTunes library: a collection of professional and collegiate a cappella tracks, with track names identical to the original recordings, sure to befuddle any conventional artist matching strategy. Would TuneUp's leverage of the Gracenote database give it an advantage in dealing with these puzzlers? Read on for more, or check out our gallery of TuneUp screenshots.

Gallery: TuneUp for Mac