Vivendi: 70 per cent rake-off isn't enough

Perhaps we should just embed Depeche Mode doing Everything Counts in the blog and have done with: Vivendi have decided that there is something "obscene" about Apple taking 30 cents in the dollar from every iTunes sale - despite, you know, having built the store, developed the market, carrying the distribution overhead.

Although on the average CD retailers and distribution costs, and making the physical product, accounts for about 60% of the retail cost. So from keeping 40 cents in the pound, the record company is now getting 70 cents - and they're making that on ancient back catalogue as well, the sort of songs that they'd be lucky to sell for ten-for-a-dollar on CD, if they even bothered to activate that catalogue. And no money tied up in stock, either.

We're not quite sure where the obscenity is, apart from the idea of a greedy company demanding even more.

Oh, what the heck: