Paul McCartney goes digital: Are The Beatles next?

In an e-mail sent out by Paul McCartney.com and reported by various news outlets, EMI announced last Friday that McCartney's entire post-Beatles catalog will be released digitally across all platforms tomorrow. McCartney has been at the forefront of significant musical announcements since he left EMI in March for Starbucks Corp.'s (NASDAQ: SBUX) new music venture, Hear Music.

The announcement marks the first time a member of The Beatles has released material in digital stores (excluding two live tracks released from Live 8 by McCartney in July 2005). McCartney's first release for Hear Music Memory Almost Full will be the first new album by a former mop-top with a digital release alongside a physical one.

EMI has also been leading music news in the past couple of months with the company's announcement in early April that it will drop the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which prohibits the transferring of digitally purchased music or other media encrypted with the software. Rumors have been constant before and since that announcement that a Beatles digital release was imminent.

The only questions that remain are whether the physical release accompanying the move will be scheduled at a much later date, and whether or not this music will be released without DRM.

McCartney is the first Beatle to move digital and if nothing else rumors are sure to begin that The Beatles catalog is next.