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As far as I've always known... Tour's only really make money for the REALLY SMALL and REALLY BIG BANDS... all the medium sized bands tour mainly to promote their record sales. And record stores take a much larger chunk than just the $1. It's more around $3-4 on up.

But you're into music right? Read an essay by steve albini (a la big black, shellac, rapeman fame... along with engineering a slew of albums). It pretty much shows artists getting hosed already... But taking away their CD royalties pretty much destroys their means of recording as a means to support their careers.

Well, it's a lot more outside the mainstream than most of america...

But back on topic... You're simply WAY off in thinking that bands recieve 7 cents per record sold... It's more around $1.00... Those dollars do add up pretty quickly.

I guess i have to post a link to this again in an effort to show the costs involved for a band to release a CD. Read through it and come back and tell me how much of that money could be averted by going to an MP3 based scheme? Not much, in the bigger picture... And yes, they are getting screwed over... we know that part already... But your bootlegging is NOT HELPING THEM IN THE SLIGHTEST.

Anyways... why don't you post some MP3's of those bands you like so much for me to download? I'm sure they won't mind, after all... Who knows, maybe I'll go to one of their shows and buy a T-shirt... That's where the bucks are, people around here say. Actually, it'd be nice if you'd email the names to me... It's near the end of my day and i'm feeling lazy!

advocating sending the artist(s) money directly?

How would the debate change if you sent the artist a check for a buck? Or the full $15? Would they cash it?

That's how the conversation started. That's why i brought up the idea of processing a million checks.

There's plenty of music out there that's worth my money. I've always told myself i'd rather lose my sight rather than hearing, because i think music is much more expresive than anything we can possibly see. I do spend my money, proudly, on CD's, because i want to see more become available.

Anyways... Here's my cd collection. You'll see that not much mainstream stuff has been "shoved down my throat". I do hold that not much good music has arrived this decade...

As far you go... in one sentence, you state you stopped buying any CD's... but you like these other bands... how are they to support themselves? Do you feverishly go to their websites and hit reload to earn them a few bucks from advertising banners?

I dropped this comment on this type of discussion before, and it still seems relevant, so here it is again:

Artists need the royalty's from their CD's to survive... Only the mega popular acts actually make money on tours. Most artists go on tours to promote their CD's. It's more of an advertising expense than a revenue generator.

If you really at all care for the artists, i strongly encourage you to give this a read. You'll see that there's already plenty of people out there screwing artists over, that fans really shouldn't start as well.

We all know that the recording industry aren't angels and are in fact devils in most cases... But without formulating a plan where artists will definetly get paid for their efforts, all the speculation about what MP3's can and can not do are moot, in my eyes.

While your experiences with they might be giants sound okay, I'd hardly assume that's how the rest of the music scene goes. Remember, they're a HUGE band, in a position where they have some influence. They also know they've got a LOT of loyal fans. Bands starting out don't have either of those luxuries.

At least get a clue....

Artists need the royalty's from their CD's to survive... Only the mega popular acts actually make money on tours. Most artists go on tours to promote their CD's. It's more of an advertising expense than a revenue generator.

If you really at all care for the artists, i strongly encourage you to give this a read. You'll see that there's already plenty of people out there screwing artists over, that fans really shouldn't start as well.

In this case, um... Lucas has me especially baffled. I didn't see any mention of intellectual property above, just of a technical standard that would allow packing more data into a given amount of bandwidth or storage capacity.

I would think the biggest market for such a thing, if applied to motion pictures, would be the manufacture of lower-cost video players, not movie piracy. The ability to pack a movie onto a CD would allow movie distributors to bring prices on their product down to the point where piracy simply wouldn't be worthwhile.

If you're going to extrapolate effects of this technology, I'd say it would be better to look at what it could (potentially) do to the video rental business, not how it could be used to steal intellectual property. I mean, if you could *buy* a movie CD for $7 or $8, who'd rent one?

- Robin