WASHINGTON – It took almost 50 years, and the release of 59 rare Beatles tracks on Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963 came complete with social media controversy.

Apple Records released the 2 hours and 29 minutes of archive recordings to maintain copyright protection of unreleased material, which runs out after five decades.

Most of the songs were already available on bootlegs, and Apple previously said the bootlegged material didn’t merit release.

Early Tuesday, published reports said the just-released collection had mysteriously disappeared from iTunes.

Some hypothesized Apple had released, then quickly taken-down the bootlegged music, to satisfy copyright requirements.

It took a while to figure out what was happening:

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