The Beatles and British music company EMI have agreed to settle a dispute over royalties the legendary band felt it was owed, a deal that could remove the final obstacle to the long-delayed move of the Fab Four's catalog online.

Beatles fans await the iTunes arrival of the Fab Four's catalog.

The settlement was agreed upon by EMI and Apple Corps, the band's management company for the past three decades. It concludes a dispute that dates back to 2005, when Apple Corps sued EMI in London's High Court, claiming that EMI owed the band 30 million pounds ($59 million) in missing royalties from album sales between 1994 and 1999.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Apple Corps is owned by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and the widows of bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison.

"I can confirm that we have reached a mutually acceptable settlement and that we are not going to say anything more than that," an EMI spokeswoman told AFP.

With EMI and Apple Corps presumably agreeing on royalty disbursements going forward, the deal could mean that the Beatles' catalog could finally head to digital music services like iTunes and Napster. The Fab Four is one of the last remaining holdouts from digital sales, and Apple chief Steve Jobs has reportedly come close several times to inking a deal that would put the Beatles' music in iTunes.

Earlier this month, EMI and Apple agreed to sell EMI's catalog on iTunes without DRM, the technology most digital retailers use to limit what a user may do with downloaded music, such as a fixed number of times a song can be burned to a CD or transferred to an MP3 player.

The DRM-free songs, which will also come at a higher fidelity than the rest of the iTunes catalog, will be available in May and will cost $1.29 per song; 30 cents more than the rest of the music in the iTunes store.