Apple want to sell over-the-air downloads – that is, music you buy over the phone network – and the record companies want to charge more for them. As ever, John Gruber nails it (but he perpetuates the HST misquote about the money trench*):
The music labels think we should pay more for a song downloaded from a server that isn’t theirs, over a network that isn’t theirs, because, well, just because.
*Â I know, I know, but it really annoys me – not least because I misquoted it once myself. The full quote, from Generation of Swine, is: “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”