Apple Reportedly in Talks to Buy Universal Music

People close to Jobs say he is convinced that the music industry is about to turn a corner in the copyright war. With the government shutting down pirate Web sites and the record industry now going after individuals for alleged piracy, the Apple chief believes digital theft will become increasingly more complicated, prompting fans to migrate to legitimate services, sources said.

Analysts believe that the 48-year-old Jobs will have to do more than make legal downloading easy. They say he also will have to slash prices, possibly to as little as 10 cents per song, to persuade consumers, many of whom have grown accustomed to free downloads, to buy music from Apple.

The launch version of Jobs' new service was developed by Apple specifically for users of its computers and iPod MP3 device. Given its minuscule market share, Apple is likely to develop a version of the service to run on computers using Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Windows software.

Jobs already has secured deals with four of the world's five largest music corporations to allow their catalogs to appear on the service, sources said.

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Steve Jobs

Born: Feb. 24, 1955

Hometown: Mountain View, Calif.

Education: Reed College, Portland, Ore. (did not graduate)

1974: Jobs works as a video game designer for Atari.

1976: Co-founds Apple Computer.

1977: Introduces Apple II, the first personal computer to come with a keyboard.

1983: Pushes Apple onto the Fortune 500.

1984: Debuts Apple's Macintosh.

1985: Steps down as Apple chairman and begins Next Inc.

1986: Co-founds Pixar Animation Studios.

1990: Makes Next's first significant corporate sale, to the William Morris talent agency.

1993: Announces that troubled Next will stop making computers.

1996: Sells Next to Apple and rejoins Apple as interim CEO.

1998: Introduces the iMac.

2000: Becomes permanent CEO and chairman of Apple.

2003: Designs online music service.

Source: Times research