Ending a public catfight where Apple CEO Steve Jobs called various music industry types "greedy," Apple has signed up again with four major record labels (Universal, Warner Music, Sony BMG and EMI), agreeing to continue selling individual songs for $.99 apiece.
The record companies fought the iTunes single-price concept, trying to push Jobs to charge higher prices for newer releases. Since iTunes holds 80% of the music downloads market, Apple is the 800-pound gorilla in that market. But then those downloads only account for 5% of the revenues of the recording industry behemoths, a number that's reportedly in mid-explosion right about now.
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Apple sets tune for pricing of song downloads [Financial Times]