In a post titled “Music Business Blames Apple Again,” TechDirt discusses once again that the music industry screwed. This time, it’s pointing out that they’re irritated with Apple for the iTunes Music Store’s continued flat-pricing model and, to a lesser extent, Apple’s unwillingness to allow other stores and devices to work with iTMS’ DRM scheme. Of course, they can’t pull out of iTMS, either, as it’s the biggest online music retailer by a long shot at this point (and is in fact bigger by volume than some physical outlets). The irony of the whole situation is that it’s the labels who gave Apple all this power in the first place by insisting their music be DRM’d:

There is something [the labels] can do — open up their own store, and sell unrestricted MP3 files at whatever price they want. iPods, and and pretty much any other digital music player, can play those files. The labels’ insistence on trying to control what people can do with the music they buy has gotten them into this mess, and it will take a reversal of that position to get them out.