Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog on Tuesday said Apple Computer Inc., the digital music market giant that popularized the sale songs online for 99 cents each, would be, er, ignorant of a shift in the market if it fails to start selling monthly or annual subscriptions to its iTunes service.

“I would be absolutely shocked if they (Apple) did not enter the subscription business. It would be idiotic not to,” Gorog said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

Napster, which runs a subscription-based online music service, has one of the best known names in the business but has failed to put a dent in Apple’s 80 percent market share.

The CEO of the reinvented Napster also defended Steve Jobs’ line against the record labels on pricing for digital downloads.

Listen to Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog call variable pricing for music and downloads “a bad idea. Period. Full stop.”