Steve Gottlieb, President and founder TVT Records, the most successful indie label in the US spoke passionately at In The City about the future of the music business.

He vehemently attacked the technology industry, as using and promoting the concept of free music in order to sell computers.

“The Problem for the music industry is it has little defence against and technology advocates like Lawrence Lessig who advocate free music.”

“We should not forget the notion of copyright and the incentive for artists. Music is part of a long continuum of intellectual property.”

“Steve Jobs has incentive for this. He is very litigious. Whether it is suing to maintain secrets or over the iPod. Whether its contracts he imposes on third parties without negotiating. There is a terrible anomaly that I don’t get a discount to buy a second iPod when not even the GUI has been updated.”

“I can’t do that because he has IP protection, and yet he wants to deny me fundamentally any right of my intellectual property.”

“I love the iPod and iTunes, but we don’t have deal with iTunes for two reasons.”

One was his failure to treat labels equally. We believe the music business is about music and it’s health depends on recognising its creative value.

“Apple is distinguishing music by whether it is owned by a large corporation. It is not treating people fairly.”