I think the reason it could be said to benefit Apple over the record company is that the record company would rather sell a record than singles. With the "hit song" music industry we've been in for awhile now the album model is much more profitable because you can make the minimum purchase quantity to get the hit song be the whole album. So, people would buy an album to get the song or songs they wanted. With individual song purchases just the hit is purchased, or just the selected songs, and few albums will sell enough tracks to make the amount per album that the record companies make with full album sells. So, it doesn't really benefit the record company because the record company wants to stick with a model that works really well for them. It could be argued that it doesn't really benefit the consumer if it means the profit margin on music would be driven down such that the money invested in bands went down. It could be argued. But it seems more likely that there is just a new consumer model emerging and companies need to adapt - certain large companies simply won't.