Warner Music, the world's largest privately held independent music company has announced plans to launch an "e-label." The conglomerate which also includes Atlantic, Elektra, Lava, Maverick, Nonesuch, Reprise, Rhino, Sire, Warner Bros. Word and incubator East/West explained the plans for the label in a speech given by chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. earlier this week:

We usually associate innovation with technology companies, but they aren't the only ones who must innovate. To survive and prosper, content companies must do so, as well. And even our very concept of copyright must innovate."

"We are excited by the power of digital distribution now available to every potential artist. We see our mission as not to control the means by which artists' voices are heard, but to amplify those voices.

As a music company, we also understand that our ultimate success lies not in preventing people from getting what they want but in providing it to them in new and exciting ways.

The label aims to change the "album" format of distribution which is ubiquitous in the industry by instead promoting smaller quarterly releases of "clusters" of songs. These clusters would consist of three or more songs by an artist. Though the most striking part of the plan is to avoid the current model which was decried by Steve Albini and Courtney Love and allow artists to retain ownership of masters and copyrights while signed to the label.

Warner is not the first label to attempt a digital-only system as Universal Music announced a similar initiative last year called UMe Digital.