A Beatles audition tape was discovered in Neptoon Records, a small record shop in Vancouver.

Store owner Rob Frith owned the tape for years, but always assumed it was a bootleg. After playing it, he realised the tape titled Beatles 60s Demos was probably a direct copy of the band's 1962 audition recorded at Decca Studios in London.

“After hearing it last night for the first time, it sounds like a master tape,” Frith wrote on Instagram. “The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have, what sounds like a Beatles 15 song Decca tapes master?”

Decca Records turned down the Beatles, who instead joined Parlophone and released their debut album Please Please Me in 1963.

“It seemed like the Beatles were in the room,” Frith told CBC.

He took to Instagram, sharing the first track ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ from the tape.

 

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A post shared by Rob Frith (@frith.rob)

Frith found the man who brought the tape to Canada, a former label executive named Jack Herschorn. According to him, the tape was given to him by a producer in London during the 1970s to sell.

“It didn’t feel like the moral thing to do,” Herschorn said. “These guys are famous and they deserve to have the right royalties on it… it deserves to come out properly.”

Frith has no plans for selling the tape.