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Red Hot Chili Peppers revolt against their management and finally show up in the iTunes Music Store

I know what you're thinking: Big deal. Another artist shows up in the iTunes Music Store.

But this isn't just any  artist. This is a huge score for Apple, and not for the reasons you might think. Sure, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the more famous bands on the planet, but that's not the point here. The point is that the Chili Peppers, by way of their bonehead management company, Q Prime, managed to make a stink back in July about not allowing their music to be sold through iTunes or any other online store that allows per-track downloading. To no one's surprise, Q Prime also just so happens to represent Metallica, a band who achieved infamy awhile back by attempting to sue its fans who downloaded the band's music via Napster.

The Chili Peppers themselves never said anything about the embargo, leading me to think that they were simply being used as pawns in a battle being waged by Q Prime and Metallica. The mouthpiece for Q Prime, Mark Reiter, could do no better than to state that "our artists would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format." Perhaps the irony simply became too much for the Chili Peppers when they went to release a "greatest hits" CD last month, which is of course the best way to kill off the album format known to mankind. Or maybe the band members (some of whom have iPod themselves, according to the band's website), figured out not having their music available through iTunes was a self-destructive move best left to those like Lars Ulrich of Metallica who seem more intent on making their point than making their fanbase happy.

So far, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have opted only to make their new "Greatest Hits" package available for purchase through iTunes, which is fine by me because I already own all of their previous albums anyway (hey, I'm a fan, what do you want?). Included in the offering is the band's latest hit single, "Fortune Faded", which serves to highlight guitarist John Frusciante's further reintegration into the band's sound, after too long an absence. One can only assume that the rest of the Chili Peppers' back catalog will appear in iTunes before too long as well. Now, if iTunes could only get Metallica onboard.

But you know what they say: the cheese stands alone.

If you've discovered that other bands have recently ended their holdouts and have joined the iTunes revolution, share it over on the billpalmer.net discussion boards. Oh, and if you don't join the billpalmer.net online Mac User Group right now, you'll be as uncool as Lars Ulrich himself:

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