[Steko]

"You can have an online music store without waging a format war and trying to control how people use their music."

You can do this today only because Apple went to bat with the labels, won a bunch of freedoms, had a crapton of success and the labels (fearing Apple's leverage) gave even more freedoms to Amazon et al.

[mishmash]

Exactly and some time down the line when Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Canocial inevitably offer an equivalent service/price it will be because Apple validated the model. The only interesting part will be if the labels make the iTunes clones pony-up the large upfront fees Apple did.