c|net has a great article about online music sales and Apple’s reign upon them. Rumors have been circulating for a while about how the labels are upset at Steve Jobs control over them and the DRM thing and how they want to get out of Steve’s grasp. Since Apple’s iTunes Music Store pretty much owns the online music sale market, they have little choice in what they can do. Now I’m not usually one to accept this kind of thing, but since I dislike the labels a lot, I smile when I read that.

One point that perked my attention in the article was this statement: “No record company by itself can basically tell Steve Jobs, ‘You’re not going to get our catalog unless you open up FairPlay to Microsoft.’ We can’t do it together.” But the truth is, that’s not true. There is one catalog Steve and everyone else have been wanting since the beginning of DRM: The Beatles. EMI/Capitol could easily tell Steve Jobs ‘this is what we want and we want it like this for being the exclusive download place of the entire Beatles catalog.’ In a heartbeat Steve would jump for that. He’s personally met with Paul McCartney on this and I know Steve would bend here. So, to say the labels have nothing in their bag is a little far.

Now will that happen? Probably not. There’s a lot more variables involved like Yoko Ono and Michael Jackson (owner of The Beatles music catalog.) I’ve heard Yoko is being a stickler about this and while I think Michael would moon walk to a quick yes in his desperate need for money, I just don’t see the label playing this card…yet.

In the end, though, I truly think Apple will lose this battle as they did the PC one. Steve Jobs blew it with the Mac dominance thing in the ’80s and he’ll blow this, too. Not licensing FairPlay will the be same ruin to the iPod and iTMS as was the strangle on Mac OS on the Macintosh. They say you learn from your mistakes; will Steve?

Orginally Posted on Lockergnome Mobile.

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