On Wednesday, Douglas Merrill, former Google executive, was named president of music label EMI's digital group. The new EMI chief, with no actual experience in the music field, brings a new and surprising perspective.

"I'm passionate about data," Merrill said on Wednesday during a phone interview with CNET News.com. "For example, there's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn't be stopping it all the time. I don't know...I am generally speaking (against suing fans). Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good...Suing fans doesn't feel like a winning strategy."

As his knowledge of the Internet is most comprehensive, he wants to use it in order to unite the two fields, music and Internet, and bring the company into a new, profitable and efficient stage. As options already brought in discussion, he said he would be willing to try music subscriptions and even an ISP fee. Subscriptions would offer users online music access in both forms of streaming and download.

Whether or not the move will prove to have been inspired remains to be seen. Douglas Merrill said the second thing in his life he is passionate about is music; as the first is obvious, things are most likely to continue smoothly from now on.