From: "Rich Gauszka" 


http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsID=17997

Apple's iTunes service dominates online music retail, the latest figures
from aggregator Digital Music Group (DMG) confirm.

The figures emerge as UK labels have begun articulating their compaints at
the level of payment they receive from online music services other than
iTunes.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one independent label owner praised
iTunes because the service hands over the most of the 79-pence per track
sale price directly to the label - but is furious at the kind of revenue
he's generating through other online services.

The label head's comments don't consider the slice of income that's handed
across to music publishers, but he's pretty clear that iTunes offers his
acts the better deal.

"For everything sold on iTunes, we get the majority of the 70-79p per
unit sale price," he said, then added: "But for everything sold
on the Ruckus Network we receive the princely sum of œ0.005 per unit.
That's half a pence. My distributor then takes their 25 per cent off of
that, leaving myself and the artists to dish up the remaining fractions of
a penny between us."

It's not much better through Real Networks, he informed - for sales through
that service, his label receives a penny per track, he claimed. The
thousand tracks sold so far have accrued œ10 to the label (to share with
the artists) rather than, "the œ790 or so we'd have got for the same
amount of sales through iTunes."

iTunes also drives business at international distributor of
independently-owned music and video catalogues, DMG.

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