Universal Music, the world's largest music publisher, successfully arm-twisted Microsoft into paying UMG a dollar for every Zune Microsoft manufactures. UMG did so using the dubious theory that MP3 players are just "repositories for stolen music" (an actual quote from a UMG exec). Microsoft apparently gave in to the extortion because the company was desperate to get enough music to sell on its Zune music Web site. Excited over the successful effort to blackmail Microsoft, UMG is now ready to go after Apple to impose an iPod tax.
Hopefully, Apple will have a little more spine than Microsoft. If not, expect to see this kind of tax on any product that is capable of recording or storing music, because the music industry has declared war on its customers--we're all just a bunch of crooks and thieves to them.