A WSJ Online freebie today examines the recent brouhaha over iTunes sales. The bottom line: there is no bottom line.

Apple doesn't break out iTunes sales in its financial reports. A spokeswoman would tell me only that "the conclusion that iTunes sales are slowing is simply incorrect."

Still, analysts haven't hesitated to try to fill the void. The wide variance in their numbers comes in large part from the different methods they use to estimate sales. Forrester, for instance, monitors the credit-card statements of a few thousand people who have volunteered to be part of its research panels, while Piper Jaffray tries to extrapolate from the few stats Apple drips out from time to time.

Another issue in the differing reports is the time period each examined. The Forrester stat basically compared sales in the month of January with those in June, while comScore and Piper Jaffray used year-over-year comparisons.

To some degree, it is hard to take the whole controversy seriously. A major function of the iTunes store is not really to sell music; it is to give Apple iron-clad "non-infringing use" status under Grokster. Whether the average iPod has 20 songs or 30 makes little real difference -- the rest of their huge capacity is filled with music downloaded from owners' CDs ( legitimate), shared by family and friends (grey - a little, who cares? Massive - it destroys the system), or P2Ped (illegitimate & immoral).

Over the long term, the fact that people do not and will not pay $0.99 a track to fill their iPods' massive capacity is important. It means that, ultimately, and after effective DRM techniques are fully implemented, rationality will prevail -- people will, for a reasonable monthly fee or for per-play micropayments, get access to vast libraries of music, with, perhaps, a time delay, so creators can collect directly from the impatient.

It's gonna be GREAT!