Apple's Jobs Wants Open Music Market

Mounting pressure on Apple (AAPL) to open up its proprietary online music store to competition has prompted CEO Steve Jobs to declare that the major music labels should be encouraged to sell their wares without a copy protection scheme.

Jobs posted a three-page "Thoughts on Music" essay on Tuesday on the Apple company homepage that says an open music retail system is "clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

"If the big four music companies [Vivendi's Universal, Sony (SNE) BMG, Warner Music Group (WMG) and EMI] would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM [digital rights management] we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store," he wrote. "Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."

Several European countries have voiced their opposition to Apple's closed system linking songs from the iTunes Music Store with iPods, a digital rights management system called FairPlay. Some countries have said that they will take legal action against the company if it does not unlock its DRM.

If every online store could sell DRM-free music, any music player would be able to play songs purchased from any store. Likewise, stores could sell music that could play on any portable player.

Jobs wrote that the music companies should agree to selling music without copy protection because "DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."