The war is on.

Emboldened by their limited successes in forcing Apple to offer DRM-free music (Thanks to EMI and later, Universal Music Group), the competitors to the digital music business that Apple’s iTunes has dominated for so long have renewed their assault on Steve Jobs and company. Apple’s iTunes works on a very proprietary system that only works with iPods. The music industry doesn’t like that, and you can’t really blame them as they want their music to be used by whoever wants to buy it in whatever MP3 player they might have.

So, EMI pushed Apple and said, “Either you lose the DRM for our songs, or we walk.” Apple, knowing that an iPod is useless without music to play in it, caved. Seeing the success EMI had, Universal Music did the same thing. Considering Universal is the largest music group in the known universe, Apple caved double time.

Seeing that there is demand out there for people more willing to give the industry what it wants (no DRM and variable pricing on MP3s), Real’s Rhapsody, MTV’s Urge, and Verizon scrapped their individual services and unified their digital music services. Rhapsody provides the music and software; MTV provides promotion, playlists, and editorial content; and Verizon provides the cell phone music market that Apple has failed to crack. Wal-Mart, one of the largest sellers of music on the planet, also launched its store, with cheaper, DRM-free downloads (doing what it does best in undercutting the competition). Yahoo, looking to capitalize on its web presence, is also launching its own Yahoo music store, which will allow users to stream samples of songs before deciding whether or not they want to buy them.

What’s all this mean? Well, in the short-term, look for competition to give the record industry more leverage in their war against Apple. In the long term, it means the physical CD as we know it is pretty much done for as a means for distributing music. How will this conflict end?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Image: The Age