FCC Swamped With iTunes Indecency Complaints

NBC Universal’s sandwich-board iTunes protest may well turn into a full-blown proletariat uprising after all.

At a press conference this morning, Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy slagged Apple, bitching about the company’s retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service. “The split between Apple and [music] producers is indecent,” Levy said. “Our contracts give too good a share to Apple. … We should have a differentiated price system.”

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group decided against a long-term renewal of its iTunes contract this past summer and has been month-to-month ever since. So it could certainly withdraw its catalog from iTunes if it chose to. But since Apple controls 76% of digital music sales, and some 15% of Universal’s revenue comes from digital sales, it probably won’t. At least not until it finds a digital music-distribution channel as effective as Apple’s. “We are in a phase during which many different actors are talking to each other,” Levy said. “We are trying to put in place several projects to ensure that music is better remunerated. … We are not just talking to Apple.”