Sadly, the one thing guaranteed to do it happened this week. Just 24 hours after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the new iPhone 4S, his predecessor Steve Jobs, the man who developed the theatre and spectacle of the company’s announcements, succumbed to the cancer he had been suffering with since 2003.

It was only in August that Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO, taking on the role of Chairman instead. Although he had taken a number of leaves of absence from the company in recent years, usually prompting wobbles in Apple’s share price, he being so tied to its vision and ethos, he’d always returned (most recently against doctor’s orders to launch the iPad 2) seemingly with as much drive as ever.

However, two months ago he wrote in his resignation letter: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come”.

I think most of us knew what that meant. Any man who can brush off pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant is going to have to be very ill indeed to admit that they can’t carry on. But still, I’m not sure any of us quite expected Jobs’ death to come so quickly and it is incredibly sad that a man with such a talent and flair for business died aged just 56.

As the news spread, tributes began to pour in, and such a respected figure was he that even the protesters occupying Wall Street, campaigning against the capitalist system of which Apple is part, felt the need to mark the sadness of his passing.

What this means for Apple as a company isn’t yet clear. Those wobbles in share price have become less pronounced more recently, and as Tim Cook (who had been established by standing in for Jobs whenever he was away) is generally seen as a suitable new leader, the company itself seems perfectly stable in business terms. Also, Apple’s long lead times on new products means that we’ll be seeing new devices that Jobs had a hand in producing for some time yet.

And so influential was he for many new entrepreneurs now rising up the ranks, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify’s Daniel Ek, his outlook will likely continue to resonate for many years to come.

Just the fact that I’m writing about him here, and assuming that you’re not wondering why I’m talking about some tech guy in a music publication, shows what influence Jobs had. Because, of course, he did do hugely important things for the music industry too. Whatever you think about it, this business would be a very different place without iTunes. By adding a music store to Apple’s music software in 2003 as a means of feeding the already dominant iPod MP3 player, digital music was gradually brought to the masses.

The iTunes Store still has around 75% market share in the digital music space despite facing competition from countless rivals over the years, including all the traditional players in music retail. That’s a huge achievement, and it seems unlikely any of its competitors over the years could have achieved something similar had the Apple platform never existed – either because they are targeting a niche audience, or because their technology is a turn off to many. Apple have always approached digital music with a mainstream agenda, and with a technology the masses can use.

And, of course, all this was just a tiny part of Jobs’ overall achievements. Earlier this year, Wired published this great piece on Steve Jobs’ life in business, how he thought and how he worked. Reading it, it’s hard not to be impressed and inspired by him.

This is taken from my editorial for CMU, which you can read in full here.

These systems, which allow you to upload your MP3 collection to an online ‘locker’ in order to play it back at any time on any internet-connected device, have been around for some time now. Google and Apple already offer online storage systems which can be used for MP3s, though without user-friendly ways to play back music files. There are various reasons why more user-friendly music-focused locker services have not, as yet, taken off.

One is a problem that has plagued many a forward-thinking web service until fairly recently: bandwidth. Although few internet users are not now on broadband, limits on usage and upload speeds have been (and continue to be in some cases) prohibitive to uploading a large music collection. Also, until the rise of smartphones, it was fairly uncommon to have a portable net-connected device, which is what you’d most likely want to be streaming music to – OK maybe you’d want to be able to listen to your home MP3 collection on your work computer, but your employer may have something to say about that. And even with smartphones (more so, in fact) bandwidth remains a major issue.

Then there are the licensing issues. Many, Amazon included, say that digital lockers don’t require the sorts of licences from record labels and music publishers that other digital services do, arguing that putting back-up copies of MP3s a user has already bought onto a remote server is no different than making back-up copies to an external hard-disk, and no one would expect to pay again when they do that.

But others – mainly labels and publishers – disagree. Some say that uploading MP3s to and playing them back from a server in the cloud is not the same as backing them up on an external hard disk. Some might even argue that, anyway, technically a licence is needed to make any sort of back-up, even to a simple external hard disk. The reason such opposing opinions can exist on this issue is because copyright law in all territories is rather vague on such matters, and therefore very open to interpretation.

We are most likely to get some clarity via US copyright law, because of a legal dispute between EMI and one of the best known existing music locker services, MP3tunes.com. They have launched a locker service without a licence, and EMI is suing them as a result, testing whether a licence is indeed needed. The case is ongoing, And earlier this year Google submitted to court a letter in support of MP3tunes and its founder, Michael Robertson (whom EMI is also suing directly), which perhaps suggests Google hopes to launch its much planned digital locker, like Amazon, without a licence (though they are reportedly, nevertheless, in talks with the labels).

It is thought Apple are hoping to avoid any possible litigation by persuading the labels to extend their existing iTunes licences so to allow some sort of digital locker – though probably one that will only allow users to upload music bought from the Apple download store. Amazon are also incentivising users of its new locker service to buy tracks via its MP3 platform (you get free locker use if you buy MP3s), so they would probably argue that their locker is really just a tool to help the music companies sell more tunes, another reason they shouldn’t have to pay an additional licence fee (though Amazon users will be able to upload music acquired from anywhere to their lockers).

Either way, expect the licensing of digital lockers debate to rumble on throughout the summer, and possibly until EMI v MP3tunes reaches its conclusion. Though, actually, perhaps this whole debate (and expensive legal squabble) is redundant. For labels to get all hot and bothered about digital lockers assumes that consumers actually want such a service. I wonder whether they do.

Since the first digital lockers appeared on the market, something bigger has arrived in the digital music domain: streaming services like Spotify and We7, and in the States Rhapsody and MOG. In the UK, Spotify is already the third most dominant digital service, behind iTunes and Amazon MP3, and it is still growing. And when you can access almost any song you want via any net-connected device (provided you’re willing to pay for mobile access) through a streaming service, why would you want to upload your limited MP3 collection anyway? In essence, Spotify is a digital locker which already has access to all your music and more, and you don’t have to go to the trouble of uploading everything yourself. And, for the record companies, there’s the added benefit Spotify et al pay a licensing fee everytime a song is played.

Okay, there are some reasons why a user might rather access their own MP3 collection via a locker rather than Spotify or We7. Firstly, a fully mobile streaming service will likely cost you more to use each year than a fully-mobile locker. Secondly, your own music collection doesn’t come with adverts which, if you go with the PC-based free versions, Spotify and We7 do. Thirdly, these services don’t have every song ever recorded in their catalogues yet, so depending on your taste they could be missing large chunks of what you like (and what is in your personal MP3 collection). Plus, of course, you might fear that, in an unpredictable market, your streaming service of choice could go offline at anytime leaving you with no music, whereas your backed up MP3 collection is yours forever.

But given just how far these streaming services have come in the last few years, while digital lockers remained very much in the backgroud, I wonder if there is that much demand for music storage any more. Especially if the labels win the licensing debate and locker providers are forced to add licensing fees or adverts to their storage systems to make things add up. So, in a world where Spotify, We7 et al do exist, is the digital locker already a redundant proposition?

If you’re very quiet and listen very closely, you might even hear a few people trying to tell you that the music industry is far from dead, that it’s actually very healthy, but that some methods of making money that had been profitable over the last 50 or 60 years are becoming less so (they’ll also whisper that the time when all musicians earned a living off their music never actually existed).

But for Jon Bon Jovi, there is only one person responsible for the death of the music industry: Steve Jobs.

Actually, in fairness, JBJ (as I’ve now decided to call him) wasn’t talking about the death of the industry in a business sense, more that he thinks the youth of today are missing out on the joyous experience of buying records. You know, heading down to the record shop on the day of release, handing over your pocket money to a man who sneers at your choice, taking it home, unwrapping it, playing it for the first time not knowing if it’ll be good or not, discovering it’s not, reading the liner notes anyway. That sort of thing.

Bon Jovi told The Sunday Times: “Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to ten, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. God, it was a magical, magical time”.

He added: “I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business”.

Basically, what Jon’s saying is that there’s no excitement surrounding new releases any more, because ‘the kids’ are picking and choosing the tracks they want off iTunes. How he thinks they know which tracks to pick, I don’t know. I suppose they’re either just downloading the singles they heard on the radio, or they’re listening to the whole album either legally or illegally beforehand. This doesn’t matter, because in this situation, Steve Jobs is still to blame for everything because it is he who allows people to decide not to buy a complete album.

This is not entirely the new situation it is purported to be, though. Okay, the ability to select album tracks as standalone items is, but as a teenager I spent much of my pocket money on singles. And I had friends (let’s call them ‘heathens’) who would listen to an album once before recording the tracks they liked most onto tape to listen to on their Walkmans. None of this is new, it’s just easier in the digital age. The sort of people who get excited about new albums still do so.

Okay, the days of running down to Our Price on the day of release and queuing up to buy a new album were fun and exciting, and may now be behind us (not only because Our Price no longer exists). And you could argue that this has been replaced by rushing to file-sharing networks to download a leaked album weeks before its release, meaning the anticipation during the build up to a new record’s official launch is lessened.

But if you’re looking for someone to blame for making music boring and predictable, well, I think Jon might want to look a little closer to home.

First off, tech blog Pocket-lint asked me to contribute to a feature called How The Apple iPad Will Change The World. I gave my thoughts on what effect it might have on the music industry both before and after the launch.

Then, not content with filling other people’s publications with my words, I went and dedicated my editorial in CMU Weekly to the iPad, as well. Here’s what that looked like:

I do so love an Apple product launch. The hype that always precedes them can only ever mean that the new thing Steve Jobs trots out with will be a big disappointment by comparison.

I suspect that this might be part of the plan, though. People always flock to point out that the latest Apple gadget is pointless, unoriginal and over-priced. And then what happens? Once the products are actually released – with our expectations reduced a little – those devices seem rather cool. And so you have the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone and all the rest. The impact all those things have had is undeniable, despite all the initial naysaying.

Will that be the case with the iPad? Only time will tell. So far its main contribution to the world is to fill Twitter with jokes about “Dom Joly’s new iPhone” and iTampons. It’s certainly not the home computer replacement I was hoping for, and nor am I going to start carrying one around in my bag instead of my iPhone (I’ll still need that for phonecalls, if nothing else). However, if, as I suspect, the iPad turns out to really be the uber-terminal for accessing online content, at home or on the move, it becomes more attractive.

Following their purchase of digital music platform Lala.com late last year, it’s been rumoured Apple might launch a service that would let you store your entire iTunes library online, ready to be accessed from anywhere. If that included films as well as music, and assuming WiFi and mobile internet connections can handle it, you’ve suddenly got a fast, friendly and lightweight way to access all your entertainment content from anywhere.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s something worth having in addition to a laptop. Possibly not. But if you only really use your laptop as an online entertainment centre, well, then why have a laptop at all? And you should never underestimate Apple’s ability to sell something people didn’t think they wanted by the millions. As with all these things, it’s the content that really makes it what it is. All you need is one truly great app to make the iPad a must-have.

Read this edition of CMU Weekly in full here.