Nope. All new iTunes releases are supported on Panther fine.
Unfortunately none of the new iPods work on Panther, even the Shuffle (which has only changed color), so it's really frustrating for us 10.3 users. I decided to just download Tiger illegally so I could get my iPod Touch to work. I utterly hate piracy, but I feel I'm fully justified in doing it because I've been planning to buy Leopard on day of release and that should be just a few weeks. Pirated Tiger in the mean time. If you want a link to download it for your friend, send me a Private Message. This is a ridiculous requirement from Apple.