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In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Jobs tells how, when Apple first approached the labels, 'they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again.'

The problem, he says was that initially the labels didn't understand or react fast enough to what was happening when the Napster-driven music downloads phenomenon got going. Their belated reaction, to try and prevent music copying with all sorts of digital protection measures, simply couldn't work. As Jobs said, 'We have PhDs here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content.'

So then the labels pursued a subscription

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model - pioneered by the likes of MusicNet and Pressplay. Again Apple said that this wouldn't work, and as its predictions gradually proved true, so the record companies came round to its way of thinking.

'We told them the music subscription service they were pushing were going to fail,' said Jobs. 'Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads.'

'Slowly but surely,' he continued, 'as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks.'

Later in the interview, Jobs is upbeat about the future of iTMS in the face of increasing competition and the prospect of Microsoft entering the market.

'Amazon does pretty well against Microsoft. So does eBay. So does Google,' he argues.

And copying iTMS will not prove easy.

'To say that Microsoft can just decide to copy it, and copy it in six months - that's a big statement. It may not be so easy.'

The full interview can be read at www.rollingstone.com.