More on reports that New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer is planning on investigating the deals behind the pricing models of iTunes and the other major download platforms.
As previously reported, Spitzer is rumoured to be keen to check whether the download platforms and/or the major record companies are guilty of price fixing in this space. Although the lawman's office have not yet commented on the investigation, Warner Music last week confirmed they had received a subpoena from the attorney general relating to their download platform dealings. Now an Executive Director of the US Digital Media Association, Jonathan Potter, has told CNet that his industry is aware of the investigations, and that "everybody expects to be contacted, and some already have been". Companies operating download platforms representing by Potter's organisation include iTunes, Napster, Real, AOL and Yahoo.
As we said the other day, given that a major fall out between the labels and the download platforms, in particular iTunes, was already on the cards regarding the one-price-fits-all model currently preferred by Apple, Spitzer's investigations could provide an interesting new dimension to what was already set to be a hot topic for the music business in 2006.