LONDON: The company that manages the Beatles commercial interests and EMI Group, which holds the rights to the Fab Four s recordings, said Thursday that they had settled a dispute over royalties, prompting speculation that they might be close to an agreement to release the Beatles music in digital form.
The Beatles are among the last big holdouts from digital music services like Apple Inc. s iTunes.
The industry is looking online for growth as it struggles with a continued downturn in sales of compact discs.
Recent legal developments, including the settlement in February of a trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps, which looks after the Beatles affairs, appeared to clear some of the hurdles.
Eric Nicoli, chief executive of EMI, has said that the company hopes to be able to sell the Beatles songs online soon.
The news of the settlement between Apple Corps and EMI, first reported Thursday in British newspapers, touched off a new round of speculation that such an agreement was imminent.
A spokeswoman for Apple Corps, Elizabeth Freund, said the settlement with EMI was not directly related to any talks about digital downloads of the Beatles music.
"Every little bit of news on this gets talked about over and over," she said.
The settlement involved a lawsuit that Apple Corps filed in 2005, contending that an audit had shown that EMI was not living up to the terms of the contract under which the company releases the Beatles music. Apple Corps contended that it was owed 30 million, or about $60 million, in royalties and other payments.
Both sides declined to detail the terms of the settlement, with Amanda Conroy, a spokeswoman for EMI, saying only that they had come to a "mutually acceptable" agreement last month.
EMI and the Beatles have fought several times over royalties. In 1989, they agreed to settle a previous case, ending a decade-long dispute.
For EMI, which has issued a series of profit warnings in recent months, the Beatles remain a bright spot more than three decades after the band broke up. "Love," a compilation of remixed Beatles recordings, has been one of the company s best-selling albums over the last year.
For most artists, the lure of royalties from digital sales has been enough to overcome hesitation about moving online.
Along with acts like Led Zeppelin and Radiohead, however, the Beatles have resisted the trend.
EMI last week said it would make its catalogue available on iTunes without copy protection, a step that other recording companies have resisted, but the announcement excluded Beatles songs.
Previously Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Inc.
, had touched off speculation that such an agreement was imminent by appearing to give the Beatles an endorsement as he introduced the new iPhone in January. At a news conference, he demonstrated the device s capabilities by displaying Beatles album covers and playing the song "Lovely Rita."
This week, Apple Corps announced that its longtime head, Neil Aspinall, had stepped down.
Aspinall, 64, will be replaced by Jeff Jones, a former executive of the Sony BMG recording company.
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