The more things change, the more my brain's rearranged
You may not feel all that different now from the way you did a week ago. Then again, your name isn't Corporate America. It was a pretty interesting week, with companies doing 180-degree turns in some cases.

Don't believe me? Let's count 'em down.

  • XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:XMSR) became a terrestrial-radio company when it suspended its top morning-show stars for insensitive comments. The comments were lewd and inappropriate, but they aired on an explicit-language station. Fans revolted. Sponsors even revolted. As sad as it may seem, it was the day that satellite radio stopped taking chances.
  • Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) became a computer company. You may argue that HP has been a big PC player since it acquired Compaq, but that wasn't really the case. A couple of years ago, it was the company's printing and imaging products that often accounted for all of the company's operating profit. A lot has changed. In its fiscal second quarter, it was the company's PC and software business that grew substantially faster than its flagship printing segment.
  • Old-school advertising grew hip again. Between China's Focus Media (NASDAQ:FMCN) posting a 75% top-line surge and WPP Group (NASDAQ:WPPGY) acquiring online marketer 24/7 Real Media (NASDAQ:TFSM), the ad giants felt surprisingly nimble.

Welcome to the jungle, Amazon
In a move that was as anticipated as it was overdue, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) finally announced that it's launching a digital music store later this year. The upshot here is that the files will be pure MP3s, not the usual digital rights management-protected fare that restricts the portability and CD-burning functionality of the tunes.

After already having launched the Unbox video-downloading service, it was really just a matter of time until Amazon got around to offering smaller music files, too. What gets me is that no one is really pointing out how Amazon was a distributor of digital music several years ago. I remember uploading a pair of my band's songs back in the late 1990s. Amazon was pretty cutting-edge at the time. You could sell digital tunes, without any maintenance overhead, through the site. Amazon also offered a virtual tip jar, which musicians could then set up on their artist websites.

Naturally, these cool gizmos bit the dust after the dot-com bubble burst, but the Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation was there, my friend. Amazon may be fashionably late now, but it was also once unfashionably early.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz recommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy.