Odd that Universal Music is apparently thinking it can walk away from Apple and iTunes. You heard that right. Universal Music Group is talking about walking away from the third largest retailer of music in the world – online or brick and mortar. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has the story.

The story was originally floated by Drudge and apparently the Wall Street Journal is backing the rumor up – though the WSJ has the walled garden policy in effect, so I can’t confirm.

The really odd part about this is that the rest of the music industry seems to catch the vibe and finally coming around. EMI has released their entire music catalog as DRMless music in the iTunes Store and my thought was that was going to be the trend of the future. I still do, but I fear mob mentality from the other music companies.

Apparently, Universal seems to be on board with the DRMless music and has some history in the area of offering music for free.

This story is still developing.