That was the headline for an article in Saturday’s Independent, and the key words are quite clearly the first and second, rather than the scaremongering bug-bear of the fifth.

Rivals aren’t really worried about a sudden explosion in availability of EMI content (the vast majority of which could doubtless be found – illegally – somewhere today if you really wanted it), now are they?

Rivals fear that their neat little business model is being further squeezed, and are having difficulty coping with the fact that this particular squeeze is entirely legal and above-board. Hysterical squealing about piracy is harder (although they’re still trying, with the help of this paper’s copy editors), and running to the MPAA for a nice big lawsuit is simply not possible this time around.

Rivals fear the need to change, and the Innovator’s Dilemma of finding ways to evolve and cannibalise their existing revenue models whilst remaining sufficiently solvent to continue.

That problem is not one limited to the music world, but most other industries seem somewhat less prone to bleating about how ‘unfair’ all this progress is.

I do have to quibble, though, with journalist Stephen Foley’s assertion that;

“The decision was a little-noticed part of the company’s ground-breaking deal with Apple that made all of EMI’s catalogue available on iTunes in a format that can be copied and played on any digital device without restriction. That deal, announced with fanfare by EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli and Apple founder Steve Jobs, was hailed as ushering in a new digital music era.”

Stephen should clearly read Panlibus.

Picture by InfoMofo, and Creative Commons-licensed on Flickr.

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