When the Sony DRM scandal broke, I pointed to a weblog entry arguing that the DRM wasn’t there to prevent customers from pirating music but rather to keep the music off of iPods in order to punish Apple for not supporting competing DRM schemes in its software. Today Joel Spolsky argues that record companies want to force Apple to allow them to price tracks sold via the iTunes Music Store at different levels because it will enable them to exert more control over musicians. As consumers we’re just pawns when it comes to this stuff.