The Wall Street Journal (which has a subscription-based web site, but is free today as part of a special promotion), has an article on Sony BMG's decision to license music for a series of corporate podcasts being produced by Rock River Communications.

Why is this important? Well, the thing is the music industry has been slow to embrace podcasting. While there's been a relationship in place for decades allowing radio stations to license music for broadcast, there's been no such deal reached with podcasters. Sure, record labels benefit from the free publicity when podcasters feature their songs. But they also have to deal with the fact that a digital copy of their intellectual property is being thrown out into the ether.

In the meantime, a whole culture of "podsafe" music has arisen. Web sites including PodSafe Audio and the podsafe music network have filled the void by creating services that allow musicians to have their music heard, and let podcasters find freely available content for their programs.

Rock River is producing podcasts to promote companies like Daimler Chrysler and Ford Motor Company. Under the new agreement those companies will pay Sony BMG an undisclosed amount of money for the right to license music for podcasts which can be distributed for up to a year. That limitation is entirely on the producer side. Anyone who downloads the podcasts can keep them as long as they like.

While this does represent a major shift in the way the music industry approaches podcasting, it's important to note that we're talking about corporate podcasts here. It's unlikely that the average Joe putting together a weekly talk and music podcast can afford to license music. And even if he can, why would he, when there are so many musicians out there who are happy to give it away for publicity reasons? If the music industry had embraced podcasts a few years ago, the concept of podsafe music might never have taken off. But now that it has, I don't see it going anywhere.