At last! Everybody is saying that Apple's new online music store has a shot at surviving. About time. The catalogue available will be rather limited, but I will for instance be able to keep up with the best of super producer team The Neptunes' work without having to but the other trash american 'R&B' starts put on their albums.
One dollar per song sounds about reasonable for permanent ownership. It is comparable to record store prices.
It is not surprising that Steve Jobs was the one who pulled it together now that it has been pulled together, he is after all equipped with his own personal 'reality distortion field', but what a struggle it has been.
What's next? Well, I would like this to end as an above-board Napster. The record labels fail to make their catalogues available in any sensible way. The joy of Napster was not the 2 million servers offering Britney Spears' latest hit but that one guy in Singapore who happened to have digitized that obscure B-side from that Los Angeles Negros single you loved so much.
If iTunes made it possible to come forward with material like this, I would gladly pay the copyright holder the requisite dollar, if Apple would be willing to act as the exchange. It is the possibility of actually getting rare recorded material that is compelling.