Beggars, Apple have yet to sign ex-US deal

CAN BEGGARS BE CHOOSERS? Beggars Group, the world’s biggest indie, has yet to reach a licensing agreement with Apple for iTunes Radio outside the U.S., Music Week reports, and there's still no word on the exact launch date in the U.K. If it launched there today, iTunes Radio would do so without the rights to play Beggars-owned recordings from the likes of Adele, The National, Queens of the Stone Age and Alabama Shakes. Beggars did agree to a U.S.-only licensing deal in time for launch in North America last week. Chairman was upbeat about the label's relationship with Apple in an interview with Music Week in June. "Apple are a hugely important partner for us, and we are of course in discussions with them about their new service," he said then. "We have no reason to expect that they will treat us, and independents generally, anything other than equitably and fairly, as we believe they have always done in recent years." (9/26a)