This is the most heinous and idiotic move they’ve made yet, and the bar was already pretty high!

Music Industry Wants Royalties From iTunes 30 Second Samples (Gizmodo)

Music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI are harassing online music stores such as iTunes to pay performance fees not only for the songs that they sell, but for the short clips that they use as previews. You know, the things that entice people to pay for music. They want to be paid for advertisements for their product.

Music publishers: iTunes not paying fair share (CNET)

“In the U.S. while we do get paid a mechanical (licensing fee) from ITunes, we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet,” David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.

I’m honestly so flabbergasted that I don’t even know what more to say about it.  Read the above articles for yourself and you’ll understand why.