I agree that he needed to communicate with the artists. The problem is the level of detail of the notes he shared. Did you read through his notes? Those notes were a perfected business plan handed to Yahoo / eMusic / Rhapsody, and a bit of a slap in the face to the major labels.

I have mixed feeling about whether it was right for Steve to be vindictive, but I am certain I would be pissed.

Everything the guy did just screams amateur. The first issue is posting information about a deal before a contract has been signed. However, I'd argue that the bigger issue is the $40 price tag that was slapped onto the iTunes upload service. The record label is already making money off of its customers through sales on iTunes; why on Earth would you cheapen the service by making it seem like anyone with $40 cash-in-hand can become part of the iTunes catalog? The fact that the author made $200,000 (!) in iTunes service sales alone says a lot.

My understanding is CD Baby was never a 'label'. They chose a service model and operated more like a fulfillment service. E.g. we will store and ship CDs to customers for a fee, we will upload your stuff to iTunes for a fee, etc. Charging $40 to upload to itunes seems very reasonable. If Apple wanted to allow anyone anywhere to upload to iTunes with no quality control, they wouldn't use partners like CDBaby.

Furthermore, it makes no sense to think Apple was pissed about the $40 since that happened after Apple got pissed.

You can see CDBaby's pricing here: http://members.cdbaby.com/cd-baby-cost.aspx

It looks like a very fair deal for small artists to me.

> Everything the guy did just screams amateur.

I disagree. At the very least, he is very smart. If you read those notes, it is clear that he has an incredible ability to distill and communicate what was important.

The whole point of CDBaby was to make selling music super accessible to anyone. He couldn't cheapen the product by doing so, as that was the product.

Whether Apple felt otherwise is perhaps the point of his post. He thought their goals coincided with his, but it looks like they had other ideas.

"Everything the guy did just screams amateur. The first issue is posting information about a deal before a contract has been signed. "

Agree. Default state in business normally "not ok to talk about this" unless specifically mentioned or there is some reason to believe that it is ok by other factors. Sometimes of course it's explicitly pointed out. Maybe someone simply forgot in the chain of command. Doesn't a meeting with Steve scream "better not talk about this"?

In the end it doesn't matter whether Apple is right or wrong anyway. It's the golden rule. He who has the gold rules. In this case assuming you want to be in business with Apple you need to go to extreme lengths to play the game the way they want it played.

wtf? As OP stated, there was nothing in the meeting about confidentiality. If you are telling people your business plan, and talking about that plan would benefit them, but you want it to remain secret, fucking tell them.

Completely agree. There's a lot of apple blindness here.