Daniel Dilger in an article on Roughly Drafted says that Steve Jobs wanted to allow users to make ring tones out of any song that they owned. In fact, he even mentions in the article that it is a relatively simple matter to get any file approved.
It seems that the record companies are seeing ringtones as a new source of income that will cost them almost nothing. And the artists don’t get much of anything for either ringtones sold from other vendors or from iTunes.
The RIAA actually feels that a ringtone is a public performance and thus they should be fully compensated for it. Of course, they are also afraid that the iTunes customer will be able to figure out how to make their own. (Wonder when the RIAA will be contacting Ambrosia Software.)
The article also mentions that what NBC really wanted with TV shows was to sell bundles to Apple. That is for every Heroes that Apple sold, they would have to buy two other less popular shows. That would force Apple to charge $4.99 for the Heroes episode so that they would make a small profit. So it would appear that both NBC and Apple were telling us the truth, just not a complete view of what what going on.
See the complete articlehere.
