Downhill Battle thinks iTunes for Windows and Mac iSbogus. Basically it seems their point is that of the $0.99 that people are buying songs for, that gives them the warm fuzzy feeling that they are legit, legal, and everything is good, still has the majority of the payment going to the RIAA and not the artist.
This may be right, but the thing is I doubt that iTunes could exist without the "blessing" of the RIAA. Like the godfather, if the big buys that basically control what music we hear every day don't like it, it doesn't happen, and they have the $ to try to sue anyone out of existance (they have lots of $ of course, from years of exploiting artists). So is no iTunes store better than one that lets the artist continue to be screwed?
Personally I say that no, iTunes is good. Artists still may not get the compensation that they deserve, but with the infrastructure in place subversion can start. Maybe apple can start introducing independant artists, giving them the FULL cut of the profits (minus the Apple take of course), or adjust artists vs record company cuts. What would happen if [random artist] decided to cut loose from their RIAA handlers and move to being independant, and have the support of iTunes? Suddenly they'd be getting a lot more per song then they do being in the shackles of servitude to the RIAA. Could it work?
Well, in my opinion it might or might not, but there'd be no way to try without a large and established infrastructure such as the iTunes store, which now that it's available to Windows users, will no doubt start increasing.
It's an interesting page anyway, I've seen it before, but never really read through it. Make your own call.