Yesterday in Wired, an article talked about the two Apple’s new contract, which allows Apple Inc (nee Computers) to start selling ipods with music preloaded. Today, Steve Jobs writes an open letter to the record labels telling them to remove DRM because it doesn’t work anyway, (commentary is everywhere) while it may seem like a coincidence, I don’t think all of things are falling together at the same time is due to God’s dice game with the universe.

Due to the non-proliferation of music that Apple has agreed to, there is no way to transfer music from an ipod directly into iTunes (I know you can get it off but it isn’t really by design). This seems to put a bit of a spanner in the works of the suggested preloaded iPods. Why would I buy an iPod full of music if I can’t get it off and put it on my computer?

I don’t mean to be a conspiracy theorist, but I would suggest that this is the exact same reason you won’t be able to download music and videos straight to the iPhone. Surely Jobs has seen the economics of the mobile downloading market and knows how much money really could be in it for him, but at the moment the agreements with the labels would prevent it.

Recently there has been a huge noise in the media about DRM being dead, and that the only way to break the Apple hold on the digital music market would be to ditch it altogether and I think Jobs is using this to push the Labels in his own direction. He wants it to be dead as well, because it allows him to start using iPods as sharing devices and sell more iPods.

Dave and I have been discussing why Apple should or shouldn’t release an iPod with FM radio, (but it really also applies to Satellite.) The long and the short of it is, if they sell 2% more devices, and it creates less incentive to browse the iTunes music store, then Apple loses out.

It’s entertaining because of Dave Winer’s predictions. While I’m not really sure how serious he is about them, there certainly is a little bit of possibility that they will occur. Regardless, I can’t see the radio appearing on an iPod anytime soon.