Hilarious story in BusinessWeek about Universal Music trying to lead a battle to unseat Apple in the music business. See here. Their CEO, Doug Morris, is shopping around an idea called Total Music where they’ll get cell phone carriers to pay them $5 per month per subscriber and all the subs will get unlimited “free” music. Best quote from Doug is one where he supposedly told a room full of fellow music industry frigtards that Apple had pulled a fast one on them. “We got rolled like a bunch of puppies.” Nice to see it only took Doug seven years to figure that out. But at long last reality is dawning on him and the other dopes in the music business. Yup, we picked your pockets. We schmoozed you and flattered you and told you all sorts of nice things and meanwhile we robbed you blind. But look at it this way. The only reason we could get away with it was because you guys spent all those years paying lip service to digital music and sitting around with your thumbs up your asses. Oooh, piracy! Oooh, the Internet! We don’t want any part of that!

And now what are you going to do? You really think you can hire the tech talent to make all this stuff work? You have the engineers? The Web designers? These sites don’t build themselves you know. But it’s more than just hiring engineers. Building Web sites, understanding technology — the problem is that this stuff is just not in your DNA. Doug Morris doesn’t even do his own email. He’s got an admin who prints it out for him and types out his responses.

As I told BusinessWeek: “Doug’s a very special guy. He’s the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He’s old school. I like him a lot.”

Inside joke: At Apple when we say someone is “special” we mean as in “special education.” As in, “rides the short bus.” When we say “old school” we mean “likely has Alzheimer’s.” When we say “I like him a lot,” it means we can’t wait to rip out his heart and eat it in front of him.

Peace, Doug Morris, you wacky old record label dope. I like you a lot. Truly. And I wish you the best with this Total Music thing. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Tiger Beat.)