When it comes to the business of legitimate digital music downloads, we think it's pretty fair to say that, right now, the landscape consists of Apple vs. Everyone Else. And the battle line is a pretty well-defined one; there's the market leader, Apple, with the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, each of which, from a legal downloads perspective, basically only works with the other. Then there's Everyone Else, including the hardware guys who generally build music players that work with Windows Media Audio, and the download services that sell WMA songs. WMA doesn't work on the iPod; the iTMS's FairPlay-protected AAC songs don't work on any portable players but the iPod. For now, at least, that works in Apple's favor, but once Microsoft really starts throwing its weight around and pushing WMA into the planet's every open pore, can the iPod really hope to cling to the top spot on the sales charts?

This, as you're no doubt all too aware, is a debate that's been raging for months, and so far Apple hasn't shown the slightest bit of interest in either making the iPod work with non-iTMS services or making the iTMS work with non-iPod players. But still the offers and entreaties continue to pour in; AtAT's resident fact-checker and Goddess of Minutiae Katie spotted a New York Times article which reports that Rob Glaser, the biggest of bigwigs over at RealNetworks, "made a direct appeal last week" to Steve Jobs, proposing that Apple and Real "form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business." The upshot? He wants Apple to license FairPlay to Real so that Real's download service can sell songs that will play on the iPod; in return, Real would make the iPod "its primary device for the RealNetworks store and for the RealPlayer software."

Now, at one point we believe we had a fairly cogent line of reasoning why licensing FairPlay would be potentially harmful to Apple's music business, but for the life of us we can't remember what it could possibly have been. Since the iTMS exists to sell iPods and licensing FairPlay to other download services would also sell iPods, we're having trouble seeing a down side-- provided, of course, Apple only licenses FairPlay to services and not to manufacturers, because if every other player on the market can suddenly work with iTMS tracks, iPod sales would probably take a nice hefty kick in the Clickwheel. But Apple barely makes any money on iTMS sales, so letting Real sell songs that work with the iPod sounds like nothing but sunshine and lollipops to us. (Well, aside from those poor souls who get suckered into using their iPods with RealPlayer instead of iTunes. For the love of all that's holy, why?!)

So will Steve sign on? We have our doubts. Glaser's email went out on the 9th and he says that Steve still hasn't replied-- and we figure it might have something to do with how Glaser framed his proposal. Reportedly the guy "strongly hinted" that "if an alliance with Apple could not be struck," he might "be forced to form a partnership with Microsoft instead." It seems that Glaser is toying with the idea of switching Real's downloadable music format from AAC to WMA, "which would make the RealNetworks services work seamlessly with Microsoft's technology"-- which, for some reason, people still seem to think is a good thing.

Now, we're by no means experts on the subject of what makes Steve Jobs tick, but we just have a gut feeling that he probably doesn't respond very well to thinly-veiled threats. It's sort of a bummer that Glaser apparently broached the subject in such a ham-fisted fashion, because aside from the slight extortion angle, why not have RealPlayer users buy iPods? Especially since their love of the iPods themselves might well eventually get a bunch of them to trade up to iTunes-- and maybe even, eventually, Macs-- for a more seamless Apple experience.

Then again, Rob Glaser used to work for Microsoft, so he probably couldn't help it. It's standard Redmond practice to phrase all business correspondence in the form of a threat, and old habits apparently die hard. Pity, that.