Now, I guess everybody knows one or two things about what's happening in the digital music world with Apple finally convincing EMI to put their catalog online in digital, DRM-free format. This is by far one of the most interesting turns the music industry has experienced during the last months and still a lot of the people are dead-curious to see what will come out of such a move.
In fact, I guess the most curious are the remaining three major who are still stubborn in holding RIAA close at their chests and embracing an eternal "we don't know, we'll just have to see" response to all questions. And just to see how curious they
are I'll just add that another major, namely Universal, has made some veiled declarations regarding a potential future collaboration with the online sales giant, Amazon.
Amazon has so far abandoned their plans to develop their own musical catalog for digital music sales but it seems like their idea was caught in the air by Universal who are somehow in a waiting state: they (and so do Sony and Warner) want to see what will become of the "recently-wed" Emi-Apple (iTunes) couple and how/what will the public do with so much unprotected music at hand.
Sony and Warner are openly worrying that the filesharing as far as music files are concerned will boost enormously; yet there is no solid evidence for such a future behavior. Now, I am quite tempted to say that even if filesharing will possibly (I repeat, there is no evidence about this) grow a bit, it's quite obvious that digital music sales will boost. Need a proof? It's child-logic: those who are sharing illegal files already have entire letters from the respective catalogs anyway, so why should filesharing increase furthermore I couldn't tell...
According to Billboard and Reuters (via Yahoo News) there is a lot of stir in the Universal's offices as some people are burning the midnight oil and try to foresee what and how will come of the Amazon-Universal affair; as well according to cited sources it seems that classical tunes will be included in some (another) test and artists like Andrea Bocelli will be "in the wild".
We'll just have to wait until later May and see what's really on; indie labels are also involved in Amazon business and willingly or not willingly, all parties must carefully judge their next steps.
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