The record companies are sheep, Job & Gates the shepherds
"What I don't understand is why either allofmp3 does not set itself up as a "service" that has the approval of all of the so called "rights" organisations"
It's because Gates did a tour back in the late 90's and told the record companies all sorts of scare stories, about how if they ever release music in MP3 format they would have no sales and all copies would be pirated. So instead they should release all their music in WMA+DRM, which he would license to them, for a fee....
And the sheep go Baaaaaaaaa.
As a result of that, they got scared and missed the market opportunity, and their online efforts had flop after flop as they tried this WMA+DRM solution and got no customers.
Jobs came along, and turned down the DRM, and used his trusted position so that customers would tolerate it. Well customers that like Apple would anyway.
But it was clear that the only people who would buy into that crap were Jobs fans, normal people still didn't go for it. Record companies were still no happy, a better watermark solution came along, EMI were not happy giving Jobs their money, they could see the end game, where all their profits are handed to Jobs because he's the only player.
So Jobs came up with an idea to keep them in line. He would sell DRM free music, but in a way designed to fail. You can have DRM free music, BUT only if you pay more, and only if you are prepared to accept 'higher quality'.
But the higher bit rate is above the range of ordinary people's hearing, they can't hear this 'higher quality', and those files are bigger, and in the wrong format for ordinary MP3 players, and more expensive too.
Wow, what a scam. If I have an MP3 player other than an iPod, I'm supposed to pay more for my copy of the music and fit fewer tracks on my player. No Thanks.
So Jobs can tell them that people like his DRM and they should not try this MP3 format.
And the sheep go Baaaaaaaaa.
So Gates and Jobs are leading the record companies like sheep, their best bet would be to simply buy allofmp3 and they'd have the winner on their hands that they disparately have been searching for all this time.
If they're worried they can always watermark the files with the purchasers ID, but since they're selling CDs it's not a big advantage, and they'd be better off just getting into the market.
But Gates and Jobs will be whispering in their ears little scare stories, so they'll never do it.
And the sheep will go Baaaaaaaaa.