The RIAA may have thought that by suing their customers they would be able to sustain a decadent business model, but today we know the opposite is the truth.

A newly-appointed EMI, and ex-Google executive has come out to state just about that. His position in overseeing EMI's “Digital strategy” is that the answer is newer business models. He asserts that people can and will buy music, if it's available to them in a format they want. Douglas Merrill, who was VP of engineering at Google until just a few months ago, added that suing your customers is not a “sustainable strategy” and that file sharing is not bad for business, and may in fact be a boon in the long run.

EMI's future plan with Merrill at its head will be an overhaul that includes a large number of job cuts, ad-supported music downloads, subscription music and more. Considering that experimenting with DRM-free music and online downloads ended up being a good thing for EMI, there seems lots of potential untapped for those willing to try new ways of doing things that depart from past RIAA's practices.