Hold the phone, there, Gomer-- we've got another piece of the puzzle regarding the "where's all the indie music" plotline from Friday. As you may recall (or may not, seeing as Friday's episode broadcast about two hours from Sunday), those UK independent music labels that refused to sign with the iTunes Music Store until just a few weeks ago are now complaining that their music isn't available at the UK store yet. While we still stand by our opinion that expecting Apple to dot all the legal i's and cross all the technical t's involved in adding the catalogs of "hundreds" of record labels within a few weeks is like expecting any task that requires a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to take "just a minute or two," faithful viewer Neil Boothman pointed out something interesting about the iTMS UK that may well be related to the matter at hand.

See, one excuse that Apple can't use is that it's too busy adding all the other new music to the store, because if you connect to the iTMS UK and look at the New Releases, you'll find that for the week of the 14th there are exactly three albums listed. Yes, three-- and one is actually a single. Add up the individual tracks and you'll find that they number a grand total of 24 songs, and one of them is the Free Single of the Week. Seems a little anemic, doesn't it? In fact, if you look at the New Songs listings for each of the past four weeks, you'll notice a disturbing trend, because the list of albums has shortened considerably with each consecutive New Music Tuesday, dropping from 50 new titles to 35 to 26 to the current 3. So is this Apple's passive-aggressive way of getting back at the UK for all the recent annoyances it's caused?

Well, no. For one thing, there are hundreds of older songs listed as "Just Added," and in fact that list is longer than it was for any of the past three weeks. For another, the French and German stores only have 23 new songs apiece this week, and we all know that Apple doesn't have a grudge against either of them. So what's the deal, here? Is the entire European music industry just taking a little breather?

Here's what we think: maybe Apple isn't adding new music to the UK, French, and German stores because the pan-European iTMS is slated to open next month. Remember, Apple's original plan was to offer a single catalog and uniform pricing across all European countries, which the current batch of stores certainly doesn't have. So we figure those were just a stopgap measure to keep Apple in the game across the pond so that Napster, etc. couldn't get too firm a toehold while Apple continued to hash out the legal wrangling with the big labels. So what if, next month, the UK, French, and German stores more or less disappear? Or, rather, they'd seamlessly turn into localized front-ends to the pan-European store, which would finally unify the pricing, selection, and usage rights of the entire iTMS catalog across the continent.

That would certainly explain why Apple isn't hustling to get all that indie music into the current stores; it'll probably all appear when the pan-European store launches. It might also explain why some of those indie labels haven't even received their contracts yet, since the terms of the agreement would presumably have to change to encompass distribution throughout Europe.

Of course, the delay in adding indie music and the throttling back of New Music additions to a slow trickle could just as easily be attributed to everyone in charge of iTMS Europe getting addicted to black tar heroin (or worse, Snood). But we like to think of ourselves as optimists at heart. Besides, this entire theory will get blown sky-high if, in just a few hours, Apple posts the New Music listing for the week of the 21st and it's hundreds of titles long; if it's still woefully short, though, then it's time either to be patient and wait for next month's new store, or to stage an intervention at the Euro iTMS offices. Whichever.

[ADDENDUM: How odd is this? Since we wrote the above scene, over a dozen New Releases have been added to the UK store-- under the September 14th heading. Guess someone kicked the habit.]