So far as Apple’s iTunes, I may concede that ease of use and reasonable pricing are not necessarily brand elements, but their association with Apple is a brand element. I would argue that Apple’s iTunes store interface and baseline DRM is not significantly simpler or easier than Amazon’s MP3 store, but Apple has long promised ease of use, so people buy from iTunes because they want ease of use. Moreover, iTunes buyers are willing to pay a price above zero — even though zero is by far common price for MP3s on the Web — to get that ease of use.

As an additional point, because music publishers have mismanaged or ignored their own brands for so long — and are perceived as fatcat exploiters by I would argue the majority of consumers — most buyers don’t experience much moral hesitation about appropriating music online for free. If those music producers and publishers had invested more in the brands, then perhaps filesharing would never have become quite so mainstream, and the RIAA wouldn’t be on its deathbed.

I guess I’ve never thought of “brand” in the way you lay out, but the concept you’re calling “brand” makes perfect sense.

As for “branding” publishers, this will be a challenge. Publishers are largely invisible, which (ironically) I think is what has saved them from backlash for this long. When The Clash signed with CBS records in 1977, it was a scandal. The Big 6 have not been demonized the way the major labels were, however, largely because consumers pay no attention to them at all. And even in music, labels that can move product on the strength of their own brands are (I would think) rare and transitory. I would have bought any record Matador put out in 1995 and anything Merge released circa 2002, but not necessarily today. But this could just argue for the case that publishers should promote independent communities of interest that are not identical with the publishers themselves, a la Tor.com.