After only just a couple of years, the iTunes music portal has become the most powerful music retailer in the world, and it can now tell the likes of Universal, Warner, SonyBMG and EMI how much to charge for music. It is up to these companies to fit in with Apple's retail strategy.
As their wholesale contracts come up for renewal, music companies have blustered, threatened, cajoled and said there was no way that they would each agree to charging one flat wholesale rate for the supply of music to Apple so that it could maintain its own flat rate of 99c per track. There were even threats, according to some reports, that companies might stop supplying music to iTunes.
However, in the end, they all realised that iTunes is now the biggest and best online music retailer in the business and online is the future of music. So in the end they all gave in. Or should we say caved in?