THE long and winding road to The Beatles' music joining the ranks of downloadable tracks appeared to be reaching an end yesterday as it emerged the band and record label EMI have settled a prolonged £30 million row over royalties.
The dispute was seen as the last hurdle preventing some of the world's most famous songs being sold through online shops like iTunes.
And speculation was mounting last night that EMI may choose 1 June - the 40th anniversary of the release of the
seminal Sergeant Pepper - as the date The Beatles will at last join the iPod generation.
The legal dispute stems back to a five-year period from 1994 to 1999 during which Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and relatives of John Lennon and George Harrison claimed that EMI underpaid them by tens of millions of pounds in royalties. That claim related to famous Beatles' albums like Help! and Abbey Road, and solo work released up to 1976, including Imagine by John Lennon.
EMI yesterday refused to discuss the terms of the settlement and would only say they had "settled on mutually acceptable terms".
The company also refused to say whether a deal on downloads was now imminent. However, EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli dropped a tantalising hint about a move to release The Beatles' back-catalogue in digital form, adding the company was "working on it, we hope it's soon".
In a separate but equally auspicious move, The Beatles settled another long-running legal dispute with Apple, the owner of iTunes and maker of the iPod, in February. Both sides had clashed over the use of the name "apple" , - by the band for their own company Apple Corps, and then as the logo of the California-based computer company.
The news of a settlement between EMI and The Beatles also came as it emerged that Neil Aspinall, the chief executive of Apple Corps, was leaving after more than 40 years of looking after the band's interests. That move is thought to have put pressure on The Beatles' camp to tie up loose ends with the band's record label.
Media analyst Mark Mulligan, from Jupiter Research, said a Beatles download deal now looked highly likely. He added: "The conversation has changed from an 'if' to a 'when'.
"The Beatles are a perennial favourite - you can put the content out there and it will sell.
"If they put The Beatles' catalogue online you will very likely see them having [chart] number ones again."
The digital back-catalogue is expected to cover around 250 tracks from The Beatles' studio albums plus various B-sides.
Bookies have already predicted that the band, defunct since 1970, could again enjoy a run of No1 hits thanks to renewed interest from digital downloaders.
However, Paul Williams, from trade magazine Music Week, said the sheer breadth of The Beatles' work made them a distinct case from other groups.
"Unlike some acts, where people are only going to be interested in a handful of songs, with The Beatles we're talking about many, many dozens of tracks that any member of the public would know.
"The potential sales we are talking about are going to be spread across many titles."
EMI's enthusiasm to reach the MP3 generation was demonstrated recently when it made the whole of its existing catalogue on iTunes free from the digital protection that effectively chains it to the iPod player. It means that tracks downloaded from the market-leading online shop can now be played on any device.
