Rumour is rife, ladies and gentlemen, that the Warner Music Group may follow rivals Universal Music in insisting on a month-to-month licensing arrangement with Apple's iTunes when its latest wider agreement with the download platform runs out at the end of the year. The Washington Post last week cited a "source with knowledge of discussions" as confirming that Warner planned to follow Universal's lead.
While Universal execs would admit that they would never take their content off iTunes at short notice - though in theory they could - the major does believe the month-to-month arrangement gives them greater 'balance of power' in their relationship with market dominant Apple, which is important given their belief (and hope) that iTunes rivals like Amazon will start to eat away at Apple's dominance in the coming year. A month-to-month relationship with iTunes gives Universal more options to respond to the needs of Apple's credible competitors, and it seems Warner now recognise that and want to be in the same position too.
The report on Warner's position came in a wider Post article on the challenges iTunes faces as the major content owners try to win back some power in the digital content market - power they lost to Apple when the computer firm pushed ahead with the launch of the iTunes Music Store in 2003 at a time when the music and movie companies were still paranoid about everything digital.
The article also speculates what impact the previously reported collapse of the Apple/NBC Universal relationship, which began with a pricing dispute last month, will have on the wider iTunes platform - the iTunes Music Store is losing NBC's TV content. The Post quotes some industry commentators as saying that the increasingly hardline approach being taken by the likes of Warner and NBC in their licensing talks with Apple could backfire, but NBC Universal spokesman Cory Shields thinks they have the upper hand, telling the Post: "The iPod is only as good as the content on it".