Nothing is stopping the labels from providing their own great user experience that integrates well with iTunes (the application, not the store). For example, say I’m Mega Pop Records. You create a Mega Pop account and give me $0.99 for a song. I give you a custom, Mega Pop RSS feed of your purchases. You add that feed to iTunes and presto, all your Mega Pop purchases land on your iPod. Purchase a new song, sync your ‘Pod and magically the new songs appear. The iTunes RSS reader does all the heavy lifting.

The reason why itunes is so good is because it browses via the itunes browser, and integrates with your music player. You don’t have to manage the files, or file structures yourself, and it will sync easily with devices.

There is the value in itunes. It’s not that it’s doing something that can’t be done any other way, it’s the fact that the user experience is very low stress.

The users choose itunes, not the labels.