Paul McCartney has revealed to Billboard that The Beatles' album catalog is close to a deal and should be available in 2008.

McCartney said: "it's all happening soon. Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go - there's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long. It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008".

Any delays in bringing the music to the digital arena has apparently been due to "contractual" issues. "You've got to get these things right," he said. "You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?'!"

A recent Pocket-lint reader poll revealed that our readers are fairly evenly divided on whether they would be keen to download digital Beatles tunes with 49% saying yes and 51% replying no.

>> News - Beatles' reader poll
>> Via - Billboard
>> And - Electronista