Sony suddenly comes up with a digital strategy

It might be a little late in the day, but Sony seems to have decided to try taking digital music seriously.

It had owned 51% of the incorrectly named IODA - "Independent" Online Distribution Alliance - and now it's going to buy up the rest, in order to be able to merge it with the other significant American digital distributor, The Orchard. Sony will then own about half of the new company, which will be called The Orchard.

Keeping it? This is a fairly dull post, but probably quite significant: as a label, Sony is as clueless as its competitors about how to make money online; as a distributor, it might well be getting its act together.