Scream, children-- scream like you've never screamed before, for if ever there were just cause for blind panic and the despair-drenched caterwauling of the damned, that curse is surely upon us! No, it's not the apocalypse-- at least, not in the "sun like sackcloth of hair, moon like blood, seas of wormwood and blood, earth pelted by hail and fire and, yes, yet more blood" sense of the word. It's worse. We're talking about (dunt-dunt-dunt-DUNNNNNNNNN!) a price hike at the iTunes Music Store. AIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Remember about a month ago when the Wall Street Journal was jawing about how the five major record labels-- Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI, and Warner Music (who, in Disney dwarf nomenclature, are known as Dopey, Stupid, Half-wit, Clueless, and Dumbass)-- were "discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases" to as high as $2.49 apiece? Well, faithful viewer mrmgraphics notes that the New York Post now reports that the price hike is practically a fait accompli: "all five of the deals... have already been signed," and "prices for some of the most popular singles could rise to $1.25, according to source familiar with the negotiations." Can this really be happening? Must we truly kiss the 99-cent download goodbye?

Well, no-- at least, not yet, and probably not for the foreseeable future. Faithful viewer Mike Feeney was first to inform us that, according to a Reuters article, Apple has officially gone on the record to deny the Post's claims. Apple spokesperson Natalie Sequeira flat-out states that "these rumors aren't true. We have multiyear agreements with the labels and our prices remain 99 cents a track." While the whole "multiyear agreements" thing is perhaps slightly at odds with Apple's recently-filed 10-Q statement (which explains that "many of the Company's licensing arrangements with these third-party content providers are short-term in nature and do not guarantee the future renewal of these arrangements at commercially reasonable terms"), it's nice to hear Apple come right out and say that its 99 cents-per-track pricing isn't going to budge. For now.

And you can believe it, too, because as we all know, Apple has a policy of not commenting on rumors, and it only bends that rule when absolutely necessary-- such as, when the reports floating around are so stunningly wrong that they might seriously affect the company's stock price. Indeed, we're starting to think that the Post was really just echoing the same stuff about "negotiations" that the Journal said, only a month late. It reports, for example, just as the WSJ did before it, that N.E.R.D.'s Fly or Die album sells for $16.99 on the iTMS. That was true a month ago, but Apple lowered the price to $13.99 almost immediately after the WSJ story hit the streets, and it remains a $13.99 album today. (Memo to the Post: the window of time between fact-checking an article and actually publishing it should probably be less than a month. Especially for a daily paper.)

Oh, and you guys can stop screaming now. We can hear you from here, and frankly, it's getting a little annoying.