Now, we hope this isn't an April Fool. Somehow we don't think so. EMI has this afternoon issued a sudden invitation calling media "TO HEAR ABOUT AN EXCITING NEW DIGITAL OFFERING. WITH SPECIAL GUEST, APPLE CEO STEVE JOBS AND A SPECIAL LIVE PERFORMANCE." (Their capitals. We have some WD-40 to fix those sticky keys, you know.)
It's happening at 1pm BST in London, which is in the wee small hours over in Cupertino where Jobs lives, so possibly his appearance isn't a live performance. Either that, or he has hopped into his Gulfstream jet to come over to London.
What for, though? What could "an exciting new digital offering" be? The bets are either on EMI giving up DRM on its songs (rating: less than likely) or the Beatles back catalogue finally being licensed by the Other Apple (Corps, which owns the song rights) to be sold digitally (rating: much more likely).
The Beatles have been digital holdouts since Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003 (others include Radiohead, ironically also an EMI artist until their last contract expired). Their arrival online might drive a whole new demographic to download their songs. It could hardly subtract from their sales. If we were betting, we'd bet on this one.
And the other possibility? EMI has experimented in a limited fashion with removing DRM, but it hasn't stuck too well. The company is also considering a merger/takeover with Warner; dumping DRM wouldn't seem like a smart move to shareholders at this point (since it might make the company look less valuable. You know how shareholders can be.) We have covered the possibility that record labels will remove DRM from their songs recently, on February 8 in "The end of the road for DRM?"; at the same time Jobs was penning his Thoughts on Music, which boiled down to "come on, guys, just get rid of the DRM. We won't mind, we'll sell more iPods anyhow."
Of course, this is Apple too, so there could be something completely unthought-of going on (Apple did look at buying Universal Music a few years ago), but somehow we don't think so.
Your bets too for who the "live performance" is going to be. We don't think it'll be Ringo Starr reading from Thomas the Tank Engine, is all we can say.
