MIDEM: PRS think music made Apple

Remember how music was before Apple came along with the iPod and iTunes, and started to create a workable digital download market?

If you're too young to recall, imagine a headless chicken desperately trying to pull its own legs off so that it could hit anyone trying to buy an egg off it.

Music isn't particularly grateful for Apple's part in sorting out the mess and creating a world where people will pay for something they could get for free. Not at all, actually, as PRS CEO Robert Ashcroft appears to be moaning that Apple treats music bad:

Apple has more cash in the bank than the record industry has ever made in annual revenue, according to Robert Ashcroft, CEO of PRS for music, speaking on a panel about innovation within the music industry at Midem. "I would like to say that the music industry contributed a little bit of that to Apple."

Well, up to a point - although nobody really buys some Universal stuff from Apple, or downloads a bunch of PRS-regulated files. If anyone involved in Music deserves a bit of thanks from Apple, it'd be the artists.

Although, I suppose, you could argue that the industry's failure to sort out its own digital offering over more-or-less the decade it had the field open to itself is something Apple should be grateful for.