Pressure from music publishers such as Warner Music and EMI could finally force Apple to increase the price of it's iTunes music from $0.99 to a few dollars on some downloads.

The term used is "flexible pricing".

We call it "milking the consumer dry".

The Wall Street Journal quotes Alain Levy, chief executive of EMI, as saying that he discussed the issue with Apple CEO Steve Jobs and he believes that Apple plans to change its one-price policy.

Steve Jobs has always steadfastly ignored requests to increase the prices of downloading commenting, quite rightly, that prices above 99 cents will stop people paying for tracks all together and turn most to downloading the music for free.

In a recent statement, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said, "Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don't want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past," he said.