John Lennon - Imagine (iTunes)

“John Lennon is one of the greatest artists of our time,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re thrilled to have his solo catalogue available on the iTunes Store for the first time.” And Yoko Ono is equally enthusiastic. “John would have loved the fact that his music will now be available in a format suited to a new generation of listeners,” she said of the launch. (Although someone should let her know that her credit has gone missing from Double Fantasy.) What constitutes a Lennon solo masterpiece is a matter of opinion and debate, but what has happened in the transfer to MP3 for the LP most regard as ‘definitive’, Imagine? In short, not a lot. There are no bonus tracks available and only one video to download (you can guess which), despite the fact that John and Yoko made an accompanying film for every single song on the set, back in the 70s... There is now some tremendous Lennon material on iTunes but you certainly have to be choosy. There are some treats in the packages they’ve put together, but there are some disappoints – and a surprising amount of sloppiness – too.

John Lennon - Lennon Legend / Working Class Hero (iTunes)

If you’re a collector, the Lennon compilations that have appeared in recent years have been pretty disappointing. The 90s’ Lennon Legend rode on the back of Oasis’ success and the 00s Working Class Hero claimed to be “definitive.” They added nothing to the early 80s John Lennon Collection or even the original and best compilation – the only one the man himself had a hand in – Shaved Fish. What’s surprising is that Lennon Legend and Working Class Hero are both available for doewnload when all they do is repeat tracks available elsewhere. Sure, they make good intros to new fans, but that’s what iTunes playlists are for!

John Lennon - Mind Games (iTunes)

It will be interesting to see how many people bother to download some of Anthology’s 20-second spoken work tracks as single downloads, but it will be even more interesting to see if anyone decides to pay 79p for a single-track download of Nutopian National Anthem from Mind Games… For those that don’t know, this was a lovely moment of Yoko-inspired performance art, consisting of six seconds of complete silence. While songs like Imagine and Give Peace A Chance have become completely overplayed, Mind Games is full of fantastic, lesser-heard gems like Bring on the Lucie and Meat City (both of which also feature here in home demo form).

John Lennon - Anthology (iTunes)

Most of the solo Lennon albums are £9.99 to download with some obvious cut-price tactics for ‘tier two’ LPs like Live in New York City, Live in Toronto and Acoustic (all of which come in at £7.99). But making the entire 1998 Anthology box set available to download for just £9.99 has to be the bargain of the century. It has 94 tracks in total, although admittedly many of them are short spoken word extracts, either from interviews or the studio. Either way, you’d be mad to spend £7.99 to download the 21-track Wonsuponatime sampler when you could get another sixty tracks from the Lennon archives for just two pounds more. One again the iTunes marketing team have let themselves down though – look carefully at the Anthology sleeve shot and what do you see? A sticker proclaiming “Property of EMI Music A&R Department”!

John Lennon - Milk and Honey (iTunes)

Two posthumous albums that have been preserved well - that might easily have fallen by the wayside (as Heart Play has) - are Milk and Honey and Menlove Avenue, Yoko’s attempts to make ‘new’ Lennon albums in the early and mid-eighties based on reels of outtakes and works-in-progress. The former still makes a nice companion piece to Double Fantasy (and includes an exclusive video download of Nobody Told Me) but the latter is more of a worry: no extra tracks and surprisingly low-volume previews which doesn’t bode well for the quality of the full-length downloads.

John & Yoko / Plastic Ono Band with Elephant's Memory - Sometime in New York City (iTunes)

One of Lennon’s most derided albums, its arrival on iTunes gives you the chance to sample for yourself and try before you buy. It’s a long haul, a compendium of Lennon’s protest songs like Attica State and Luck Of The Irish. It was also his first solo outing to feature major vocal input from Yoko, like track two in this set: the boogie version of Sisters, O Sisters. Happy Christmas (War Is Over) is the video that comes with this set and it’s the version from the Lennon Legend DVD.

John Lennon - Walls and Bridges (iTunes)

One of the things solo Lennon fans have all spent a lot of time thinking about, at one time or another, is what type of music he would have made throughout the 80s, 90s and today, had it all not been so brutally cut short. Perhaps the two most overlooked pointers to the answer are Walls and Bridges and Mind Games, two classic albums recorded as he surfed the wave of New York life and – briefly – that of a single man in the mid-70s. But what’s been done to Walls and Bridges on iTunes is an abomination: for starters the original sleeve has been replaced by the photo used for the 2005 remaster. But that seems like nothing when you read the official write up Apple has given the album. You wonder if they really are trying to preserve and promote Lennon’s legacy when they describe Walls and Bridges as “decidedly uneven… containing too much mediocre material… weighed down by weak melodies… heavy over production…” Incredible!

Plastic Ono Band - Plastic Ono Band (iTunes)

This is where it all started – the companion piece to Yoko Ono’s album of the same name and John’s first solo outing. Sixteen Lennon albums arrive on iTunes this month and Plastic Ono Band is one of six that comes with an exclusive video, in this case it’s Mother. This is the recently remastered version of the album of course - not the version that languished on CD throughout the 90s - and as such comes as a 13-tracker with additional remixes of Do The Oz and Power To The People.