Music executives gathered for the Digital Music Forum East conference on Tuesday in New York to whine, cry and collectively slap Apple CEO Steve Jobs for his recent comments on digital rights management (DRM). Jobs bent the music industry over and inflicted massive damage three weeks ago when he proclaimed Apple would support an end to DRM. Still sore, execs took the opportunity at the “State of the Digital Union” panel to publicly berate Jobs and label his comments “insincere.” Of course, none of the music bigwigs said they were going to pull their support for Apple, probably because iTunes makes them bundles of money.

The doom and gloom speak is not entirely without merit, as CD sales are down 23 percent from over the last six years. Still, blasting your biggest source of legal downloading income … not such a good idea. Right now, to consumers, iPod means music. What do you think will happen if there’s a rift between the music industry and Apple? Without iTunes, music revenues would probably drop faster than a drunk sorority girl’s panties and the execs would be left holding the bag. Battle lines are being drawn over DRM. Could music civil war be far behind?

[Via cnet]