Today comes news that two of the largest music labels are trying to merge.

EMI's latest attempt to combine with Warner Music, its third in six years, has been rebuffed after its American rival turned down a $4.2bn (£2.3bn) takeover approach. Both groups were in a stand-off yesterday, with sources close to Warner insisting it would take an increased offer for talks to reopen, while the EMI camp said its approach was the only option if Warner's private equity owners wanted to quit the business. EMI, the world's third-largest record group, confirmed it had offered $28.50 a share for its nearest competitor, ranked fourth in the market.

If the takeover/merger goes through then nearly 80% of all recorded music sales are going to be in the hands of just three firms:

A combined EMI and Warner would control 24.7% of the global record market, behind Sony BMG with 25.5% and Universal Music's 28.3%. As standalone groups, EMI and Warner are distant rivals to the top two, with market shares of 13.4% and 11.3% respectively.

There are a variety of reasons why and motivations for mergers such as this. Firms almost always anticipate greater profits, often due to greater efficiencies and market power from the combined operations. Those efficiences can appear in the underlying processes that companies use to produce and deliver their products and services. Efficiencies can also result from greater consistency of the products, that is to say, by making the products more similar.

And while I have no problem with firms pursuing such a strategy, one thing that rarely seems to result from it is more innovation and creativity. In fact, there are many business people and analysts, myself included, who insist that the pressure for profits in large companies can create incentives towards the standardization that facilitates global reach and can reduce the calculated risk-taking upon which innovation and creativity depend.

In the case of the music industry, where over 80% of all recorded music is produced by fewer than 4 major labeks, the effect of such a merger is all but certain: there will be more "we-too" artists. You have a marginally-taletned gyrating, blonde, bombshell hottie, so do we; you have gold-tooth ganster rapper, we do too; you have mildly disaffected acoustic sensitive, got one; you got a squeaky-clean boy band... you get the idea.

But even if the merger should take hold, all is not lost. There will always be artists outside of the powerful orbit of the major labels who will create and innovate in ways not anticipated by the rest. There will always be someone out there, somewhere, who recombine elements of old, who reinterpret classics for a new generation, who take the best of the local and present it for the enjoyment of the global and visa versa. There is always going to be someone who not only doesn't fit any pre-defined mold. Somewhere out there someone is in the process of elevating the art and redefining the genre. All that having been said, one the last places on earth I'd have thought that any of this would be happening is Inner Mongolia.