Think all is well in the land of Jobs? Not so fast. The folks over at Universal Music Group of Vivendi have notified Apple that they will not be renewing their annual contract to sell music through iTunes. Instead, Universal will be marketing music to Apple at will which allows the company to remove songs from iTunes on short notice. According to News.com, reps from both sides have declined to comment on the story but it’s assumed to be a result of a standoff in negotiations between the two companies.
So what would happen if iTunes was missing the Universal catalog? Well here’s something to consider from an Apple perspective – one out of every three new releases sold in the U.S. comes from a Universal record label. That’s a lot of releases! From the Universal perspective, the sales of digital music accounted for 15 percent of Universal’s worldwide revenue in Q1 (over 200 million dollars). Unfortunately we don’t know what percent of that 15 percent belongs to Apple.
You can read more about this over at News.com here.
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