News Huge Gaps in Europe's ITunes

From Wired:

CARDIFF, Wales -- When it comes to music collections, size matters.

Apple boasts about putting 10,000 songs in music fans' pockets, but disgruntled British iTunes Music Store customers say Steve Jobs' service just doesn't measure up.

Jobs last week fronted a high-profile European launch for the popular download service, but was forced to go live without dozens of key artists such as The Strokes and The White Stripes, after falling out with the continent's acclaimed independent labels.

Negotiations broke down on the eve of the debut, and Apple still hasn't been able to offer an online licensing deal deemed acceptable to the indies, which make up a quarter of all European music sales.

The Association of Independent Music, which represents 820 U.K. labels, does not want its members to commit to the three-year, fixed-income deal it said is on the table.

"The independent sector is keen to license to as many new services as possible, but never in a million years will we sign up to an online deal that isn't as good as the deals we already have offline," AIM's Sam Shentob said. "In a year or so, they may decide to increase their prices -- but all that extra markup would go to Apple (and not to the labels). We are not going to throw our music away. The terms are simply unviable."

More here, and elReg has pics of the protest iMix's here

The annoying thing is that the search engine in iTunes brings up all sorts of indie bands that were obviously supposed to be there for the launch, but due to the fubar over rights dont have any tracks on the service. Go ahead and try it - search for an independant, and you'll proabably find the artiste / band. But no music.