“ITunes, the leader of the digital music services pack, has a catalog of over 700,000 songs—but that’s not nearly enough for Apple. To maintain its lead, the company is on a hunt to find exclusive music, everything from out-of-print singles in music company vaults to songs that have never been pressed onto a CD and even recordings from the estates of deceased artists.
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And if anyone can get the labels to open the vaults, Jobs can, analysts said.
‘What Jobs is saying is, ‘We’d be happy to take all this content that is rotting away in warehouses and turn it into a new revenue source for you,’ said Barry Ritholtz, a market strategist with Maxim Group, a money-management firm.
‘It’s probably a bit much to say Jobs is saving the music industry, but he’s showing them the way into the digital age. They have been stumbling around drunk in the dark.’”
