Apple has indicated it would open its iTunes store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world's major record labels abandoned the anti-piracy technology that serves as the industry's security blanket.
Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, made the case for abolishing the protections known as Digital Rights Management, or DRM, in an open letter posted on the California-based company's website.
Like many things done by the trendsetting Mr Jobs, his call for change created an almost immediate buzz.
Supporters hailed Mr Jobs for leveraging Apple's growing clout as one of the world's largest music sellers in an attempt to remove restrictions that annoy many consumers.
But critics derided the message as a disingenuous manoeuvre designed to soften a recent backlash in Europe, where iTunes' incompatibility with other portable music devices besides the iPod has been branded anti-competitive.
Over the past eight months, consumer rights and protection groups in Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands have lodged complaints against Apple for iTunes' incompatibility with other music players.
The attacks have to be especially painful for Mr Jobs, who has long positioned Apple's Macintosh computers as a more consumer-friendly alternative to the personal computers that depend on Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system, says Chris Castle, a music rights lawyer.
Europeans are "painting (Jobs) out to be as bad as Bill Gates and that is not exactly what he wants", Mr Castle said. "Steve is used to being seen as a the cool guy."
Mr Jobs' essay, dubbed "Thoughts on Music", cited the recording labels' anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes could not be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod.
Those same DRM protections also prevent the iPod from playing music bought from many other competing online stores.
If not for the DRM safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system that would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft's recently introduced Zune.
Raising a bit of irony in his dissertation, Jobs noted that three of the four largest music labels were owned by European interests.
Mr Jobs suggested that consumers unhappy with the status quo should urge the world's four largest labels - Universal Music Group, British group EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group - to sell their online catalogues without the DRM restrictions. Those four labels distribute more than 70 per cent of the world's music.
"Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace," Mr Jobs wrote. "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."