As anyone with an interest in music knows, apart from the indies, there are only really four big record companies; Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI. It's also old news at this stage that EMI are in trouble financially. Warner are planning on making a takeover bid. All pretty boring business news so far and it's hard to have sympathy for a bunch of DRM loving pigopolists, but I was thinking about what this could mean for popular music.

For a start EMI is the last major record label whose primary business is music rather than being part of a larger "media" empire that wants to sell you Playstations, crap movies or internet access. So while it's easy to take glee in the fall of one of the big four, on the other hand you wonder what it says about the state of popular music.

Is this a good or bad thing or just another day in the office for the record industry?