Meanwhile, what about that Dell Music Store that was pre-announced last Thursday-- when it finally surfaces sometime "before December," is it going to be another dud like the loathsome BuyMusic.com, or will it approach the iTunes Music Store end of the spectrum, like MusicMatch Downloads seemingly will? Well, while we personally would never want to bet on the quality of anything coming from a company whose entire business model is predicated on using the cheapest parts possible without killing more than 3% of its customer base, we're pretty darn sure that when it arrives, feature-for-feature, the Dell Music Store will probably be the equal of MusicMatch Downloads. Mostly because it'll be MusicMatch Downloads.

Yes, faithful viewer Bill Brown shatters yet another youthful illusion today; apparently not only is there no Tooth Fairy, but also Dell isn't building its own music download service to compete with the iTMS. Instead, as reported by CNET, Dell's offering will apparently be "a separately branded version of the MusicMatch service." Which kinda makes you wonder why Mike Dell claims that he's "had discussions with a number of major music labels in the course of building [Dell's] new service," since reportedly all Dell is doing is slapping its name on MusicMatch Downloads. Then again, Steve Jobs did meet with the major labels to wrangle licensing deals for the iTMS, and as we're all too painfully aware, anything Steve does, Mike has to copy. How long do you think the label execs humored him before calling security?

And guess what? Not only is the Dell Music Store just a re-branded MusicMatch Downloads, but the Dell Digital Jukebox is also reportedly just a re-branded MP3 player from Creative Labs. At least, that's what The Mercury News is reporting, though while there are clearly some iPod ripoffs in Creative's stable, none of them looks quite like Dell's doohickey, so that bit may be apocryphal. Still, given that Dell is all about cheap, and re-branding is certainly cheaper than developing a new player from scratch, we assume that the DellPod is probably a Creative player that just isn't on the market yet.

Apple, for its part, actually deigned to comment publicly on Dell's decidedly familiar-looking music strategy: "It appears that Dell is re-branding one of the second-tier music services that will be announced soon, just like they are re-branding Creative's MP3 player. There is little original here." True-- of course, Dell, almost certainly takes that as a compliment, since the company admits that its winning strategy has always been to wait and see what new stuff catches on, and then move in and do it cheaper. Of course, this time around, Dell has outdone itself; now it's not even copycatting existing Apple products and services. Instead it's re-branding products and services from other companies copycatting existing Apple products and services.

In fact, you know what? Screw innovation! Apple could save a bundle on production by cutting a deal with Dell to re-brand its stuff. We hereby propose that next spring's 4G iPod be an Apple-re-branded Dell-re-branded Creative Labs iPod knockoff. Why, the stock would probably go through the roof!