EMI's Eric Nicoli and Apple Computer's Steve Jobs will hold a press conference tomorrow (Monday) afternoon at EMI's London headquarters. (Read article at MacWorld.) The invitation to journalists reads, "Please join EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli at EMI’s headquarters on Monday 2 April at 1pm London/8am New York time to hear about an exciting new digital offering, with special guest, Apple CEO Steve Jobs."

Why would Jobs go to London to make an announcement with EMI? If it's not something related to The Beatles catalog, I'm stumped.

From New York Times: Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan has a guess on tomorrow's event: a "Yellow Submarine" iPod that comes preloaded with Beatles tracks. "The trademark settlement deal clearly raised the possibility of Apple selling EMI music in a physical format. This is an original idea and helps Apple with their core business, selling devices.”

Update: Reuters has sources that say this will not be a Beatles announcement.

So....what is this about? DRM possibly. I can't imagine that Jobs would show up for an announcement about something as (to the layman) mundane as a new licensing agreement. Apple rolls out new iTunes features very quietly, but it makes a big splash with hardware-related news. Nicoli was really talking up with iPhone the other day, so that's a possibility.

Updated update: According to the Wall Street Journal (via Idolator), EMI will announce it will offer a "significant amounts of its catalog" without DRM.

Wow. I'm not totally blown away, but I'm blown away. Offering just parts of its catalog without DRM is a major change in strategy. But it makes perfect sense. This is a year in which things are coming to a boil and pressure to re-think entrenched beliefs is higher than ever. The fun part will be the wait for EMI's competitors, and seeing how this effects catalog sales.