iTunes Future Uncertain?

A Royalty fee war is ensuing between Apple and the National Music Publishers' Association. Could Apple's threats mean the end of iTunes?

Read the full article here.

Although I support the sentiment, I'm afraid the music industry are shooting themselves in the foot. iTunes is really the only viable, central and well-done payment-based delivery system for digital music.

Having said that: iTunes itself won't stop, just the store

It`s a legitimate way to get music online, with funds going to who they `should`. The amounts/quantities they can argue between themselves and thrash it out.

But - the worse case scenario for the music people would be for iTunes to drop the drm sales completely, and make the likes of iTunes(or a new variant) that just plays regular music.

Sounds good, but people will get their music - by any means necessary. Currently they have a source of income for their tunes, without iTunes completely, people will increasingly discover u don`t need to pay anything.

DRM is eventually going to bite itself on the arse. Perhaps it`s had it`s glory and time to pack things up completely.

Makes no difference to me what they do.

Considering the number of users on itunes store, I think any record company should be wary about charging more. At the end of the day though, i don't mind paying an extra 3.5p on music. This has something to do with most of the bands I like having gone west in a haze of drugs and car/plane crashes in the 60s and 70s and partly because CDs are where its at.

I reckon that iTunes that they won't close down. I certainly hope not!

no great loss if itunes gets closed down imo..

anyone heard about Nokia's new music service, once you've paid for it, it's completely free. Its called the "comes with music". I think this is going to be the biggest potential killer of itunes.

me personaly I cannot see anything related to Itunes closing.

a)too big to powerfull

b)doing to well

it won't close it's too big / popular even if it does who will it realistically hurt? we all know how to get it for free anyway...? and they'll just lose money by trying to kill iTunes tbh

The story refers to iTunes Store and not iTunes itself. Sorry for the mix up. It does say in the main artitcle, but I missed the stores off in the forum title and intro. Sorry about that.