Apple's Jobs Wants Open Music Market

Mounting pressure on Apple (AAPL Quote) 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 Quote) BMG, Warner Music Group (WMG Quote) 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." ...