Amazon Forges Tie With Music Startup SellABand

Yesterday, Amazon let known its establishment of a partnership between itself and the European startup SellABand. The association it will have with SellABand is simple: it will sell music released by artists developed through the independent service.

Why do we share this piece of information with you? Well, as many already know, Amazon several months ago unveiled its long-awaited music download service, appropriately named AmazonMP3. It was generally hailed by the blogosphere as welcome competition to Apple’s dominant iTunes service, most of which remains under the dominion of a consumer-unfriendly DRM sequence that shoppers have either unknowing or begrudgingly accepted (for the time being).

And so it appears that Amazon is working to grow gradually its new digital extension into a nexus for content similar to what has been done over the years with Amazon.com in general: building bridges between its powerful sales machine and third parties to expand their limited distribution potential (relative to Bezos’s beast) and increase its bottom line.

Clearly, expansion has always been Amazon’s focus. Diversification, too. From its early years, the marketplace has been most inclusive. The company made it possible for booksellers elsewhere to align themselves with its own model. It’s done the same with other genres of the retail space as well. Now it’s set its ambition sights on all things digital – and wasting little time of it, it seems.

This new arrangement made with SellABand falls rather perfectly in line with the basic methodology Amazon has so far practiced to its advantage. Which is not to stifle the business of others. Instead, it is to invite the minnows and even the larger and feistier fish to establish their own respective outlets in the great big bazaar; in many cases to the mutual success of one another.

Does the partnership struck between Amazon and SellABand mean anything more, however? Does it presage an acquisition, perhaps? Will Amazon enter the realm of music development and promotion, effectively trumping Apple and iTunes at the game the iPod-wielding franchise has all but perfected? There’s no doubt Apple has long wanted to erect its own recording institution, a la CDbaby.net. How humorous and intriguing it would be for Amazon to create – or, in SellABand’s case, acquire – such a business hitherto anything assembled by the folks at Infinite Loop.

Who’s to say what it plans to do, really? Most anything can happen these days. With the music industry in such dire straights, a cash-rich giant like Amazon could very well introduce a markedly unprecedented and unique system without inflicting much permanent harm on existing relations between AmazonMP3 and the major labels it currently promotes. The initiative is quite young, after all. Better upend the status quo now rather than later.

Right? Well, no. It’s just too difficult to conceive of Amazon literally throwing its name on such a project. It’s just starting to really gain ground in the digital download space, and so it makes more sense just to shake the hands at SellABand and leave the music development and promotion up to them.

Heck, it might not even work out as well as both sides hope it to. If that ends up being the case, Amazon is surely better off keeping a safe distance. But hey, here’s to hoping the two hit it big.