Executives at the major record labels are expected to once again pressure Apple to offer a subscription service through iTunes, according to the Financial Times. Reporter Joshua Chaffin (no relation to this author) said that the labels see such a service offered through iTunes as an opportunity to increase their digital download profits, and will use the process of renewing licensing agreements with Apple as the platform for achieving that goal.

The article suggested that Universal execs are most hot for such a service, noting that the label would like to see residual monthly income. EMI and Apple recently announced a new agreement that will offer EMI's catalog without DRM through iTunes starting in May, but that announcement did not also include mention of a subscription service.

Apple has heretofore said that consumers wish to own their music, not rent it, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs has publicly mocked those services that offered rental deals when touting iTunes. Of course, Mr. Jobs had also publicly said that playing video on an iPod was unnecessary, and that iPods were "about the music, stupid," paraphrasing former president Bill Clinton. That changed as soon as Apple was ready to release a video-capable iPod less than a year later.

Accordingly, don't expect Apple's past rhetoric on the issue to necessarily be an indication on where the company will go tomorrow. In addition, subscription services have found a foothold with a small segment of the music buying population, with almost all of Napster 2.0's success in marketplace happening with its subscription service. Apple's now overwhelmingly dominant position in both the digital media device market and the digital downloads market could allow the company the flexibility to broaden its iTunes product offering.

That dominance has left Apple in driver's seat in the digital download market, and that's something that has continued to bother some music execs. "They're desperate for an iPod killer so that they won't be beholden to Steve Jobs," the article quoted an unnamed music executive "familiar with the discussions" as saying.

The reporter also subtly placed the recording industry's position that Apple's iPod profits are in some way tied to iTunes downloads themselves as an objective truth. Some of the labels have said that they want a piece of those iPod profits, and even successfully negotiated a deal with Microsoft that gave them a cut of each of Big Redmond's Zune device.

The labels have not, however, received royalty payments from Victrolas, record players, cassette players, stereos (Hi Fi or Lo Fi), or car stereos in the past, though they have negotiated royalties from cassette and CD-R media sales in some countries.

In the same vein, the reporter stated as fact the notion that the majority of the music on the 100 million iPods Apple has sold is illegally pirated, something that may or may not be true, but something the labels seem to want to be the case.