That catalog omission may soon be over. Sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Apple is preparing to announce its iTunes Store will finally include the Fab Four. Hmm, that’s funny, because Apple just posted on its homepage this morning to expect an “exciting announcement” from iTunes tomorrow. Could it be? Has Apple finally reconciled with the Beatles, after years of legal disputes? And will people still care, even as the Beatles have been overtaken by “Glee” for the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart?

Spokespeople for Apple, EMI and Paul McCartney declined to comment. The sources also cautioned that Apple could change plans at the last minute. After all, it was only this weekend that the Internet was sure Facebook was about to launch a new e-mail system. While we wait, this song probably best reflects Apple’s feelings on Beatles fans:

Blue aliens and glittery vampires are apparently no match for a first-person shooter with a zombie mode. 

Set during the height of the Cold War, “Black Ops” recently drew fire from Cuba for a mission in which the player attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. This has apparently not made much of a dent in sales — even outside of North America. According to Joystiq, “Black Ops” grossed more during its U.K. launch last week than the country’s entire entertainment software market made over the past couple of weeks … combined. That makes last week the highest grossing week for entertainment software in the history of the United Kingdom.

Will this success finally kill the notion that video games are strictly for kids and antisocial nerdlings? Maybe, but the Daily Mail still wonders whether games like “Black Ops” will spell the death of your relationship. Never mind that an Entertainment Software Association report showed 38 percent of gamers are female. 

In case you’re wondering how much video games have changed in the past 25 years, watch this “Black Ops” trailer and try to imagine “Gimme Shelter” being used in commercials for “Contra” or “Metal Gear”:

Rich teenagers doing lines is nothing new, but alas — since Lovato is part of the Disney empire, she’s held to a different standard than, say, when Lindsay Lohan, Bruno Mars or Kid Cudi, among others, were caught powdering their noses. Has a blizzard descended over Hollywood? The Times says celebrity users have made cocaine all the rage in Britain. Lovato’s rep, however, denies the star is in treatment for drugs. 

In light of what’s happened, Lovato’s TV show, “Sonny With a Chance,” may be in jeopardy. Oddly enough, so is “Jonas L.A.,” the Disney Channel show starring the Jonas Brothers. What happened, Disney? It’s a shame, since a lot of Lovato’s songs are pretty catchy:

Which leads one to ask, Why deny the world of some M.J. love? Well, think of it this way. Would you rather listen to the Beatles album “Revolver” or the “Revolver” outtakes included on the Beatles Anthology? Sure, it’s fun to listen to the first take of “Tomorrow Never Knows” … once. There’s a reason artists release the songs or versions of songs that they release.

Not that it’s not tempting to purchase an album of never-before-heard Michael Jackson music, but it’s also worth pointing out Jackson recorded “Breaking News” in 2007 — not right before his death. He had two years to release the single if he wanted to. As the Washington Post points out, “Breaking News” is definitely not one of his best.

But in the meantime, Entertainment Weekly is taking a poll on whether you think “Breaking News” is a phony. Curious for a listen? Check out the song below:

And so I set out on a journey into the world of archaic audio, to find out who still used the Walkman. The first part of the puzzle: It’s often people not living in America. The Walkman special interest page on Facebook is run by someone in Turkey. Facebook’s Walkman Appreciation Society (68 members) is run by someone in Germany. Part of this affection may owe to technology lag.

“There is possibly some demand remaining in developing regions,” Michael Inouye, a digital home analyst for ABI Research, told Yahoo! News, which went on to point out that less than 30 percent of the world population has access to the Internet.

Or maybe there are other reasons Europeans cling to their Walkmans.

“I’ve never really thought about it, but it makes sense. Europeans are more aware of design and quality than Americans,” says Tim Jarman, a Brit who runs the reference site Walkman Central with his brother Nick. Walkman Central is one of the largest databases on the Web for all things Walkman; it offers deep analyses of every model — from the pricey Solar Walkman to the famously yellow “Sports” Walkman that could allegedly float.

Jarman doesn’t seem fazed by Sony’s decision. He tells me via e-mail that Japanese-made models haven’t been sold in the UK for many years. (Indeed, Sony will continue to make the product in China.)

But why does anyone use a Walkman these days? Jarman explains: “Working as I do in the music press, I have found that the Walkman, due to its superior sound quality, is still very popular with serious listeners of all types.” He makes a good point. An MP3 is a form of compressed audio, and the loss of sound quality compared to a CD or cassette is certainly noticeable to the trained ear. As Jarman puts it, “There’s no point downgrading to digital when you already have the best.”

His website inspires me to dig out my aunt’s old Walkman: a 1988 WM-AF22. Walkman Central dismisses the British counterpart of this model — “The quality of finish was not the best.” Oh, well. The Walkman is still a time machine for people who grew up using the things: the heavy click of the stop button, the high-speed squiggly sound of the tape as it fast-forwarded, the patience and guesswork required to get to the next song — all of it can seem bizarre and foreign to someone raised on the instant gratification of CDs and MP3s. And yet, the Walkman was the music revolution of its own time: It reinvented portable electronics. And it’s hard to underestimate the influence of the blank tape (whose equal never existed on vinyl), allowing users that great expression of adolescent angst: the mix tape.

But even if a Walkman provides a better listening experience than an MP3 player, where do you even find cassettes for sale these days? The discount rack at the local car wash may be the ideal spot to find the Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits. But what if you want something a bit … newer?

Enter Burger Records, in Fullerton, Calif. Burger Records sounds like an anachronism: a specialty shop focusing on cassettes and vinyl that opened in the middle of the Great Recession. And yet, business is booming a year after the store was featured on the cover of OC Weekly. “Things have only gotten bigger and crazier. It’s awesome,” says Sean Bohrman, one of the owners.

It’s no surprise there’s a market for much-fetishized vinyl records. But cassette tapes, with all their flaws, never inspired much poetry: They melted in the sun, the tape was forever getting tangled. But Burger Records, like other specialty stores across the country, sells not only cassettes dating back 40 years, but also new tapes and new artists on labels like Sub Pop and Vice Records. That’s right: On cassette.

People are “just listening to music any way they can,” explains Bohrman. “And this is a cheap way to listen to music. People are willing to take a chance on cassettes for $5, whereas they wouldn’t buy an LP or CD for $10 or $15.” He says the average Burger customer is between 15 and 30 years old. That means nostalgia might not play a factor so much as novelty and economics. And anyone looking to build up an old record collection would do well to work in cassettes. A search on eBay yields 15,000 plus results, most of them between $1 and $5.  (A search for vinyl yields over 2 million results, ranging from a dollar to thousands.)

And again, sound quality. A musician himself and co-owner of the Burger Records record label, Bohrman defends the cassette’s acoustic merits. “It’s a warmer sound, it’s an analog sound. It’s the actual sound as opposed to a compressed MP3.” But there’s also something deeper, more symbolic at play: It’s just something you can hold in your hand. You can’t hold an MP3 in your hand, he says.

But like Tim Jarman, Bohrman doesn’t shed too many tears for the end of Japanese Walkman production. “For one, they made like 220 million of them,” he says. Plenty to fill the aisles of thrift shops for years to come. Burger Records also keeps a Walkman inside the store for people to listen to cassettes while they shop. Burger co-founder Lee Rickard still uses his.

Meanwhile, I put new batteries in my aunt’s Walkman, and I’m hunting for my old Spin Doctors cassette. The songs may be terrible in retrospect, but apparently on a Walkman, it’ll still sound amazing.