Someone at Apple Finally Listened to the Lyrics to "Closer"

There's been a lot of online drama about Apple's mysterious approval process for applications sold in the iTunes store. There's not a definitive list of rules about acceptable content and the rejection letters are notoriously vague. Sometimes the decision gets reversed with no real explanation. Just last week the wildly offensive Baby Shaker was approved and yanked only a few hours after appearing in the store.

Trent Reznor announced over the weekend (via his Twitter account) that Apple has rejected an update to Nine Inch Nails' popular nin:access app because of "objectionable content" from "The Downward Spiral."

As anyone at his old record company can testify, Trent can whip online news sites into a frenzy and create an uproar. Look for the app to get approved by the end of the week and expect Apple to offer no explanation whatsoever.

Read more at Pitchfork. Trent posted the full rejection letter from Apple at the NIN forum. You can still get the original version of the app at the iTunes store.

James Barber has written about music and movies for Slate, Blender, Good and AlltheMusicNews.com. He is also a record producer, band manager, music business technology consultant and was an A&R guy at Geffen/DGC Records (back in the 90s when that meant something). He has never been a celebrity chef in Canada, even though he gets a lot of internet fan mail for that guy.