hahahahahahahahahahahah.

And with Apple's co-operation to make discovering, accessing and purchasing these products even more seamless and intuitive, we'll be offering many, many more of these products going forward."

This sounds like the crux of his change in attitude. There's obviously been some back-room compromises going on. The question is what is Apple offering to Warner to engender such a sea change? A bigger slice of the front-page iTunes store feature slots?

...extra shelf space to every dissenting label - you'd run out of premium shelves. so it's likely a combination of some other incentive, and AAPL just flat out calling their bluff.

the labels don't have a clue how to flourish in this new world. they show their ignorance at frequent intervals. buh bye, dinosaurs.

I think I have whiplash ;-)

I hope he shows he's really serious by adding Warners music to iTunes Plus - if he does, probably everyone else will follow.

While I'm glad for the news, I can't stand people like this. He needs to figure out just where he really stands and stick to it. As it is, he could turn around tomorrow and start bashing Apple again.

...He'd have a lot more credibility if he hadn't as vehemently bashed Apple, iTunes and the iPod earlier - as it stands, this reads more as if someone is majorly eating crow (after seeing how dismal his revenues were from competing efforts with Amazon, or other vendors, and how much money iTunes is making them), or as someone else pointed out, some backroom deals are forcing him to reverse his stance.

Mostly, his 'speech' reads like the usual canned content, though if you pay close attention, there is the crux of what this is all about plain to see, hidden in the middle of his statement:

"By packaging a full album into a bundle of music with ringtones, videos and other combinations and variation we found products that consumers demonstrably valued and were willing to purchase at premium prices"

Magic words: 'bundle', 'premium prices', 'packaging'

Looks like Warner gets to do with Music, what Universal failed to do with videos. No wonder he's playing nice.

You might think he's had an epiphany because he finally bought an iPhone, but really, it's just another deal to make more money, it seems.

Nothing changes the fact, though, that Bronfman's a clueless a**, who'll say anything if a buck can be made -- the real winner, as always, is Steve.

Don't get carried away. We're talking about Warner here, not Universal.

Now that would make me want to fork feed crow.

I was going to post a comment, but godrifle stole it! :)

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

I don't think he started his with a "bwa," which I think makes the laugh distinctly more evil, so I will.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

How's that crow taste, BEEE-YOTCH??!

Actually, going back a few years, Jobs praised Warners for having some smart people - as I understand, they were quick to get on board with iTMS, and generally got the idea of digital music early on. (And as a label they've often been good at taking 'cult' acts like REM, Mary Chain, Flaming Lips, etc into the mainstream without expecting immediate success on the first LP).

That doesn't mean that they have to agree 100% - I'm actually of the view that variable pricing would be a good thing - we can, after all, usually cope with it when we go to a supermarket, or record store. [And competition between the labels, and with p2p, should actually keep prices down].

The ideal would actually be lots of stores POWERED by iTMS as the delivery engine.

But yes, it would be good to see them getting on board with iTunes plus, and realising most consumers value convenience above all.