I just read an article on David Pakman's blog that I thought bore sharing. I'm going to quote a segment here.
Shouldn't music be decentralized? Not free, but just available everywhere, especially to developers to create more engaging and relevant online music experiences. Music needs to become part of the fabric of the web, not an overlay on top of it. Like I can embed my Twitter stream anywhere, I need to be able to embed the music driving my life all over the web too. Not just the song names, the music itself. I have a need to share it, but I really can't today. If this happened, the businesses that could be built on top of it are quite interesting. The data becomes the value here enabling the new generation of music programmers to emerge based on the collective and specific expertise of the masses.
To me, the businesspeople making the decisions at the big corporations are just too stuck in the past to allow new technologies to emerge that would make more money for the artists and allow listeners new conveniences and new opportunities to discover music.