[Quote:]

BusinessWeek has a story — “Universal Music Takes on iTunes”¹ — regarding a supposed proposal from Universal Music chief Doug Morris to create a music-industry-owned subscription service called Total Music. BusinessWeek twists the story into pretzel-like contortions to present this scheme as clever and reasonable.

While the details are in flux, insiders say Morris & Co. have an intriguing business model: get hardware makers or cell carriers to absorb the cost of a roughly $5-per-month subscription fee so consumers get a device with all-you-can-eat music that’s essentially free.

So hardware makers will “absorb the cost”, rather than passing the cost along to consumers. Uh-huh.

Daring Fireball continues to rip it to pieces much better than I can, except perhaps for this quote I’m stealing from Slashdot:

So we have:

* Free as in speech (you’re free to do what you want with it)
* Free as in beer (you get it for free)
* And now there’s free as in Sony (we’re free to fuck you after we have your money)

No thanks, Sony and UMG.