Setting aside the backslapping and the rhetoric, this week’s premature dissolution of the Sony BMG joint venture represented a simple divergence of views on the future of recorded music. Sony thinks it is worth persisting with; Bertelsmann does not. Which side is right?

The signals are mixed. It is beyond question that online delivery and piracy have savaged the industry; total global recorded music sales fell about 15 per cent in the four years Sony and BMG were together. But the rate of decline seems to be stabilising, as digital sales begin to compensate. Total music revenues in the US were down less than 5 per cent year on year in the past two quarters, according to Goldman Sachs estimates – compared with a 9 per cent annual fall last year. As Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows indicated, the ability to download music for free does not necessarily make consumers freeloaders; about a third paid up for the privilege.