In an article at the New York Times, The Orchard's Greg Scholl gave his support of MySpace Music and said a record industry based on advertising "could well dwarf today’s $30 billion global recorded music industry." (There's potential there, sure, but who's going to figure out how to capture it? Potential has existed but remained elusive for pretty much the entire decade.)

"This is something we should have done earlier,” said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president for the digital division at Universal Music Group. “It’s kind of like a staging ground for us to experiment with new business models.”

The obvious problem here is that MySpace Music is not an experiment surrounded by the sort of mild optimism that one places on future, uncertain outcomes. This is the second-coming of iTunes, the sort of project that can usher in a changing of the guard when it falls through. On one hand I find it hard to believe this one project can be of such great importance to the record industry, but there aren't many actionable Plan Bs in the pantry if this doesn't work out.

"MySpace Music represents the first credible, large-scale initiative in this direction," said Scholl. It will be quite the learning experience, that's for sure.