Forbes reports Apple Computer’s contacting the major record companies about selling music videos through iTunes, to be played on computers and/or a future video iPod. Sony’s PlayStation Portable game machine can already be easily used to play motion-picture content.

Don’t think of this as the Forbes writer does, as a way for the deservedly-beseiged music giants to make another buck. Think of it as a way for indie videomakers to make a buck, at last.

During the dot-dom madness days, a lot of fly-by-nite outfits popped up (including several in Seattle) making and/or distributing short online video productions in many genres–sketch and standup comedy, animation, documentary, alternative news, erotica, and even video art. Most of the nonporn efforts failed financially. (The ad-supported, big-money-backed iFilm is the chief surviving exception.)

But, following on Apple’s embracing of audio podcasters, iTunes could provide a simple, open-to-all-comers pay-per-view system. (And because it’s Apple, it wouldn’t be annoyingly Windows-only, like so many subscription net-Video systems out there.)

Of course, having a workable business model doesn’t mean indie short-video makers will have an easy path to profitability. Cheaper means of production since the ’90s have led to an explosion of indie feature-film making, resulting in a glut of unviewable semipro movies.

But freed from the need to keep a compelling story going for more than an hour, these nascent artistes with their digi-camcorders could learn their craft while getting audience feedback. Film/video is a complex collection of skills, best learned via the high-concept, immediate-impact form of the short.

In the ’90s, several instructors and advisors told young filmmakers to skip shorts and start directly in feature projects. Chief among their reasons: There was no market for live-action shorts, but features could be hawked at Sundance and other festivals, or at least sold on video from your own website. For a middle-class kid looking at a lifetime of credit-card servitude just to break into his/her chosen craft, it was an easy idea to accept.

We’ve all seen, or scrupulously avoided, the results: Innumerable, interminable exercises in “hip” violence and relationship whining, with bad acting and terrible audio.

With shorts, these kids can say what they really need to say and then stop. Like I’m doing now.