It's been a long wait for fans, but The Beatles are rumoured to finally be about to begin releasing their music on streaming services and tracks could come as early as Christmas Eve. Despite being arguably the most popular group of all time, the Fab Four have so far kept their back catalogue off services such as Spotify and Apple Music.

The BeatlesAre The Beatles about to join the streaming world?

Billboard reports that there is conflicting information on exactly when the band’s music will appear on streaming services, but discussions are said to be ‘strongly hinting’ towards a December 24th arrival date.

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It’s also not known which streaming sites will land the deal to hold The Beatles back catalogue. Early reports suggested Universal Music Group’s Apple Records label had some sort of exclusive streaming deal, but Billboard reports that it’s likely “most, if not all” streaming sites will have access to a full array of Beatles tracks come the release date.

But if such a deal is in place, no one is saying anything. Representatives from Rhapsody, Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Deezer and Slacker all declined to comment to Billboard on any sort of deal.

It’s no surprise really that The Beatles have decided to wait so long to get onboard the digital music revolution. It tool them six years to appear on iTunes, but when they did they sold two million songs during their first week.

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Despite disbanding in 1970, it also took them 25 years to release the ‘Anthology’ documentary and 22 years to digitally remaster their music after initially releasing it on CD in 1987.