EMI Plans Digital Music Service

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EMI hopes to launch their own digital music service by year's end, the label revealed. Even though CD sales are consistently on the decline while digital sales rise, a source close to the new service says "This is not an effort to compete with iTunes or Amazon." Instead, it reflects an attempt to EMI to better connect with the internet age by providing consumers with a more modern, direct way of purchasing EMI music. The label hasn't counted out adding other labels to their enterprise, however. EMI's service will reportedly provide a blend of free and paid content, plus it will contain a "music discovery function" akin to last.fm and Pandora. The launch of their own music service might explain EMI's reluctance in the past to join similar sites like MySpace Music.

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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