News.blog: Beatles catalogue ready for iTunes?

After years of speculation about when the Beatles music catalogue would finally be offered on iTunes, that day may soon arrive.

London's Telegraph reported on Saturday that former Beatle Paul McCartney has agreed to release the band's music catalog to Apple for as much as £300m.

Is this finally the end of the on-again, off-again courtship between Apple and Apple Corps. The latter is the media corporation that oversees the Beatles' music and other copyright materials.

Rumours that the Beatles' music would be available for download on iTunes have circulated for years, but this time they carry some weight. Besides the Telegraph, the Daily Mail also reported a similar story.

No release date has been set, according to the papers.

If the Fab Four really are heading to legal downloads, look for them to do well. While long-time fans of the group, which broke up 38 years ago, have likely already bought the band's albums, or CDs or downloaded the songs off a peer-to-peer site, iTunes could help introduce the Beatles to a whole new generation of listeners.

How the money would be split among the surviving band members, Ringo Starr, McCartney and the estates of the late George Harrison and John Lennon, hasn't been disclosed, according to the British papers.