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I can help... 1. Market yourself in the local music scene. 2. Get local gigs and save that money towards studio time. 3. Studios can be rented for as little as $100/hr and you can even have them supply you with an Engineer 4. Get a website (myspace, etc...) and market your to your fan base 5. Get your audio masters and submit them to lulu or CD Baby 6. Submit your audio to radio stations, satellite stations and even cable TV networks for air play. I know I've oversimplified the process, but it can work. I have several friends who are doing this exact thing. One friend of mine started the band Serpent Underground. They are self produced have weekly radio play on XM, have had Cable spots on Playboy and are competing in MTV2's On The Rise contest for MTV Play. My point is, you can eliminate the middle man and you can bypass the RIAA. My take on the whole RIAA situation is that it is the equivalent of seeing a black lab crap on your lawn, subpoenaing the records of all the black lab owners in your neighborhood from the city, sending all the owners a settlement offer to pay $100 for your cleanup costs of all the poop on your lawn in the last year(when you can't prove how much you actually paid for the cleanup), If they don't remit payment then you sue for $100 for each incident even though you still can't prove you ever paid. The RIAA bases their initial lawsuits on IP addresses. Everybody on slashdot knows that is completely unreliable proof of who was actually using the computer that was sharing the song or file. Once they know who had that song according to the unreliable IP address, they go after the owner of the ISP account. They CANNOT PROVE that anybody ever DOWNLOADED that song and they CANNOT PROVE that the song you possessed was not legally yours or another file named the same and they CANNOT PROVE that the IP address was your computer or that the files were shared of any users' free will without infringing on your 14th amendment rights and the CANNOT PROVE that they've actually lost any money (i.e. damages). The problem is that most judges, attorneys and defendants involved do not understand the technology. So they give in and pay. It is extortion and it is borderline illegal. Only a class action suit will bring this to an end.

I bought a fair number (20+) of CDs last year. It's just most of them were directly from the groups in question (or through http://cdbaby.com/. I only bought a few (3) from labels large enough to get store distribution. And even then, 2 weren't on US labels.

Maybe if the music indrustry/major labels started publishing better stuff they would sell more CDs again.

Make "Strip Mall Heaven" a hit record...

http://cdbaby.com/soulamp
Free stuff here:
http://soul-amp.com/

Prove the analysts wrong...and make an obscure album by a obscure band made up of a Middle School Custodian, a Oracle DBA and Notes Programmer a hit...by simply popping for our disk on line. After all who wants all that money going to Ashlee Simpson or some American Idle clone.

It's 100% BuG FoG

"By Geeks for Geeks"
If you do we can make another one and maybe play a show in your town, clean your bathroom, Upgrade your Oracle 7 DB to 10g RAC and do what ever Lotus Notes freaks do. (I still don't know what he does and I have known him for years) Ok I suppose I should SAY SOMETHING about the article...Big corporate propaganda. The Long Tail freaked the wigs out. The old 80/20 business model is being melted by a 14 year old with a bic lighter and a iPod...Yeah baby destruction derby time...(I know you built car models and made dents) So they respond with a Jedi mind fook: "This is not the long tail you are looking for, move along." type of article. So all is well in Wellsville.

Ashlee is waiting.

Go to her now.

Step 4.5: Only buy music from independent label distributors (i.e. CD Baby).

Why does everyone always forget the best place in the world to buy music. You'd think being the best and all that would help them stick in people's minds.

My band makes $10 a CD on cdbaby, or at the live shows, and we sell an entire album on itunes for less than $6.40. Admittedly, we don't have to pay to make more CDs, but it IS less money, even including manufacturing and shipping costs.

That being said, I'd still prefer people buy our music in any form, at any price, as often as possible. :)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/leperkhanz

rhY

The folks over at CD Baby are musicians and have set up their own online store selling independent artists music both on CD and now digitally through various vendors including iTunes. They've got clear descriptions of what they do and what the artist gets and in our they stick to them.

Disclaimer: my wife has CD's on CD-Baby.

The folks over at CD Baby are musicians and have set up their own online store selling independent artists music both on CD and now digitally through various vendors including iTunes. They've got clear descriptions of what they do and what the artist gets and in our they stick to them.

Disclaimer: my wife has CD's on CD-Baby.

Here's my experience as an indie artist.

I sell CDs through CDBaby, which gives me digital distribution through iTunes and other services. If you buy one of my tracks on iTunes (the store that pays me the most), I make between 59.1 and 63.7 cents, depending on the track. I'm not sure why one track pays more than another, but I notice that my best-selling track pays 63.7 cents. A full album download on iTunes gets me $6.37, after CDBaby takes their flat 9 percent cut.

That's not much different from what I get from my physical sales, but that's by choice. The deal with CDBaby is, I set my price as I wish, then they tack on their own $4 overhead. So I said I wanted $6.50 per CD, and my CD sells for $10.50.

Online sales also allow for tiny sales - if you stream my song on one of many services, for example, I might get a fraction of a cent or as much as four cents.

At any rate, for me, digital sale prices are merely out of my control - iTunes will charge what it wants, take a certain cut, let CDBaby take a certain cut, and I'll get the rest. On my physical sales, I can decide how much I want per CD, assuming I can find customers at the price I set.

[salesplug] If anybody wants to check me out on CDBaby, I'm at http://www.cdbaby.com/nathanlong [/salesplug]

Yes, it's called CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/ check it out!

From four drunken sailors:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/leperkhanz

Yep, it's a shameless self plug and totally off-topic. Deal with it. I don't know how else to get the word out, and besides: It's a damn good CD. Besides, I'm absolutely sick of our government from top to bottom, and this music gets my mind off it enough to eat and stay healthy.

cdbaby has a useful genre/category/mood browser.

Your post reads like ad copy. No music site is that great.

Except CD BABY.

Not to be a CDBaby fanboy (okay, EXACTLY to be a CDBaby fanboy) but if you're an artist that has listed your CD via CDBaby's digital distribution service, you are listed at eMusic :-)

And now the shameless plug ... I know this because my band Goodwin is also at eMusic, and according to our accounting reports we're getting some sales.

Let's just disregard the fact that you have no real perspective.

If you don't like the law and don't like the RIAA's tactics, don't buy music from publishers and recording companies that support it. Buy music only from groups and companies that are expressly not members and/or support file trading.

Jim's Big Ego (http://bigego.com/) is a great band and they release their music under the Creative Commons License. Only buy music from enlightened places like Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/). CDBaby (http://cdbaby.com/) works directly with artists and gives them most of the profits.

Once you have done all that, then tell the companies that you would normally buy from why you aren't going to buy from them until they leave the RIAA or reign it in. Until you do that, if you still download music that you haven't paid for and don't have permission to download, you're full of crap.

Finding RIAA-free music that I like is easy and free. I even *gasp* buy RIAA-free music too! 8-0

Now, go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

There are thousands of indie labels flourishing in online marketplaces like CD Baby and Beatport, selling digital music without DRM. A lot of the bigger labels are just trying desparately to preserve the status quo long enough for them to get their bearings and remain competitive. I don't think it's working.

Exactly my point. It's really a whole different ball-game now. I've been playing ball with a bunch of indie labels and artists, and we're achieving some pretty stunning distribution numbers. Some of the top features on my MP3 blog have been downloaded over 60,000 times each. My own music had a quarter-million downloads last month -- and this is for electronic music, where 10,000 record sales is considered a hit.

My friends in Taxi Doll are just an indie group going it alone (as of this writing), and they've managed to got their music into films staring J-Lo and Harrison Ford. They're taking advantage of digital distribution and free downloads to help them get the word out, and they've got plans to expand the strategy in the future.

Why are people still talking about the music industry like it's 1997? Whole genres have broken off from the major outlets, and started hacking it alone. There are tons of indies on sites like Beatport and CD Baby selling digital downloads and CDs with no DRM. Imagine that -- music producers giving people what they want, rather than force feeding them crippled songs.

There's a huge undercurrent in the music industry right now, and the storm is brewing. The old industry is a sinking ship. Some of us have been saying it for years, but the day of reckoning is coming quickly, now.

For what it's worth:
See the CD Baby sales chart.

An interesting 2004-to-2005 summary comparison:

2004 CD sales : $7.5M
2005 CD sales: $10.3M

2004 digital sales: $0.76M
2005 digital sales: $3.1M

new CDs added in 2004: 28,285
new CDs added in 2005: 37,798

And you can always see our current numbers halfway down the page at cdbaby.com/about.

I buy more music now a days, although none of it from labels the RIAA ever made a dime from. I just got back from a music festival in Northern California and picked up a dozen albums on physical CDs. Many musicians now have their own web site and market on CDBaby. Despite free downloads and live taping allowed, sales were brisk. I'm one the minority who believes MP3 sound is inadequate, so if I like it, I'll buy it. More so from an artist who runs his own label and will see something from the sale.

"Of course, the people actually selling CDs are no longer offering this"

Au contraire!

OK so it ain't Top 40 radio but indie musicians need (and, perhaps, deserve) more support anyway.

But then again, IIAIE (I Am An Indie Musician)...

Now, I almost never RTFA but in this case I *DID* LTFM (Listen to the BEEP Music). Check out the song on irrational exuberance/depression http://cdbaby.com/mp3lofi/esuspension-03.m3u It's a great chilling piece that goes from great cheers and you to utter depression. Very cool. :)

I prefer my MoFo's of the Honky variety.

"lots of fun for the whole trailer park"

You're making your comment in jest, I know. You actually have a good counterpoint to his article: His claim is that the life skills WoW teaches are bunk, and you point out that "making money" is a life skill in the USA.

Why not look at his points one by one? He repeats himself twice, so he really just has 3 objections:

Time > Skill

He's right that a great talent can do as much in less time as a mediocre talent. That's just to get the same quality of work.

My best friend is in a band. He and I both admit that I have more musical talent in my left arm than he has in his whole body. The difference is that I'm a slacker, and he's constantly working at it. The result is that he has more and better CDs than I will ever make. His Ability far exceeds anything I've ever accomplished in any context.

And that's how it goes: Ability is a combination of effort and talent, and the coefficients favor effort: The mediocre talents who put in great effort always get ahead of the great talents who put in a mediocre effort in the real world.

I also feel that this is more fair; God has not seen fit to distribute all talents evenly, so claiming that talent is the most valuable thing (moreso than effort or ability) is tantamount to saying that blond hair and blue eyes are more valuable than black hair and brown eyes.

So here, I have to agree with what WoW teaches.

group > solo

I'm an introvert, just like the author. I am not a hermit. A few years back, I took the Dale Carnegie course -- you know, that Dale Carnegie?

The knowledge I gained changed my life. Learning the skills of how to get along with others didn't mean abandoning the introverted lifestyle. The main thing to realize is that people skills are learned skills, not inherent abilities. Even if you're an introvert, that doesn't mean you want to be a hermit or die alone -- and it also doesn't mean you can't learn how to deal with people effectively.

Your so-called "superior" may be an idiot jerk to you, but he got his position because he isn't a jerk to the right people. And if you look at the superiors who are great managers, they aren't great because they know more about your field than you. They're great because they are easy to get along with and know how to let you do your job well.

Take a look at the great bands that were great together, but when they split apart the solo acts all seemed wanting. Or how your family is not just a number of people, but seems to have a life of its own. Very few people really want to be completely alone, but some of us are just not very good at it; it would be a problem, except that anyone can get better at it. I know that I did -- or at the very least, I recognize my mistakes when I make them now. :)

So once again I find that WoW is teaching the right things with real life.

Terms of Service

I don't really have an opinion on this, because I am not a subscriber. :)

Work, in the real world, is more valuable than skill, and it also seems more fair that it should be that way. And well-made groups are more valuable than the sum of their parts -- especially families. In the end, I'd say the top two lessons he says WoW teaches are very important lessons and are the right things to teach.

Oh, there's no need to tell me about CDBaby.

My last order from CDBaby left me quite happy.

for bands that are looking for exposure, not profits.

I aggree that a cheap-per-song service is needed, but until then, I support lowpro bands via....... its been mentioned before, i'll mention it again: CD Baby, baby.

not at $.25 or $.50 but inexpensive, and in the spirit of the artist.

I have no affiliation with the site, but they do good things for the artists, and have sent me "extra" CDs with tunes from other obscure artists that fit the genres of the CDs I ordered.

another great way to support bands, and to support good use of P2P apps, is Furthur Network I have used this for years, and love it (killer Talking Heads shows!). It only trades live music, and with bands that have given Furthur Net approval to do so. Most of the stuff I trade is lossless, as is most of the music in the network, either FLAC or .shn (Shorten) lossless codecs.

"I've stopped purchasing RIAA encumbered music"

And it seems that is the only way they will learn, or end up on the scrap heap.

While I have been tempted by some new albums I have to refrain from allowing any of my cash to end up in any RIAA pockets. I've been purchasing indy CDs through http://cdbaby.com/ and I purchase music downloads in both MP3 and OGG formats from http://audiolunchbox.com./

I refuse to hand over my hard earned money for a product which robs me of fair use rights.

burnin

Thank the gods for cdbaby.com :)

Now THAT we can agree on. :)

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/nathanlong

In Q3, the top 10 retailers were as follows (note: numbers within parentheses denote retailer unit-sales position in Q3 2004):

1. Wal-Mart (1)
2. Best Buy (2)
3. Target (3)
4. Amazon.com (4)
5. FYE (10)
6. Circuit City (Tied for 5)
7. Apple\iTunes (14)
8. Tower Records (Tied for 7)
9. Sam Goody (Tied for 5)
10. Borders (9)

Absolutely. Check out CD Baby.

"Can artists put their own music on iTunes and skip the record labels altogether? It seems to me, if they could do that, then they wouldn't have to mess with 'Big Content'."

Yes, they can. There is CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/ which does submit indie artists to iTunes. They do filter for "quality" though.

They don't just turn artists down with no explanation. They do critiques which, from the ones I've read, are pretty fair. The critiques generally have to do with either poor quality of the recording/mixing itself, or skill at the art such as someone who does a recording, but just isn't a very good musician/singer. like sour chords/notes, poor song writing structurals, etc. I'm in a blues band (lead guitarist) and we've been considering submitting our CD(s) to CDBaby.

I'm the tech-knowledgeable one in the group, and it's taking some time and effort to convince the other band members to take new avenues of distribution seriously. The first part of the resistance is the common one of general computer fear and ignorance that is familiar to us all on slashdot whenever we try to talk to a non-tech type person about anything to do with computers. The other is, once the idea of indie distributors/promoters like CDBaby is grasped, the next reaction is "I dunno if we should 'waste our time' with that, because it'll get shut down just like Napster..."they" (music/content industry) won't allow something like that to ruin their profits...are you *sure* it's even legal?".

It's sad and quite scary to me how widely the "if it's not from the labels, it's likely illegal or will be soon" meme has spread even among artists and musicians.

Just my $0.02

Strat

Which is where in Indies should really be pushing...

"Here Apple, have our entire catalogue for world wide distribution."

I have to say, I'm very impressed with the independent music scene in Australia. There's a great spirit of independence there, helped by Triple-J Radio, a gov't-sponsored nationwide radio that actually plays a lot of truly-independent local artists, QMusic - a gov't-sponsored non-profit to develop and help local musicians, AIR, the Association of Independent Record Labels, which is run by a few passionate punks in Brisbane.

(I'm SO impressed, in fact, that we're going to be setting up a CD Baby office in Australia in a couple months!)

and I'm still not sure what you're saying. When you buy major-label music on the iTunes Music Store, the artists get very little of your money. You're still giving most of it to the labels.

The independent artists still get a decent chunk from iTunes when you specifically buy their music, since the major labels don't get a cut and Apple wants to give the musicians more. The RIAA Radar can be a big help finding out who's 'clean'.

Support smaller bands, try to discover the other music that's available to you, by checking on Magnatune, and CDBaby, and even MySpace Music. When you buy from the bands on these sites, you know that most of your money is going directly to the artist instead of the middlemen.

False dichotomy.

"There's a very real chance that words like piracy and theft *will* apply to downloading music."

I hope not. Just as much as corporations that "rape the land" aren't rapists, killing the competiton isn't really killing, and stealing someone's heart doesn't make you a thief. I hope people will realize that stealing in "stealing music off the internet" is just a conveinient generalization (for copyright infringment) and not actual theft.

Now I know alot of people who download music off the internet because they're cheap and don't want to pay any price for music, but I wouldn't mind paying a fair price (and I do). Im just fed up of being taken advantage of with friggin CD price fixing and general greed of the RIAA. I used to *work* at a retailer that sold CD's yet just like everone else I had to pay the same $16 a pop as everyone else (got killer discounts in other departments). Rumor was it the store made more money off the bargain bin CD's (yes the $1 ones) than they did off the regular ones. Now I just *buy* my music from magnatune , cdbaby , and half.com ($2 and under cd's :).

Never again in my life will the RIAA see a penny from me. I don't care how much I like an artist of theirs, i'll just wait till they die off (the RIAA not the artist). Greed of that magnitude should be punished. This whole iTunes ordeal is surrealistic how open they can be about their greed. I'm thinking of mailing the RIAA my monthly music expenditures just so they can see how much money I spend *elsewhere* to get my music fix.

If I want a disc of music on a RIAA member label I make sure I purchase a previously owned CD of it instead of a new one. Amazon, Music Stack, and other online services are available if you can't find the used CD you want locally.

On the other hand, if the music I want is not on a RIAA member label (which luckly is most of what I listen to since I really like industrial and EBM music), I make sure I purchase it new. RIAA Radar is a good search engine to use as another poster has pointed out. For independent music CD Baby is also way cool.

I use CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/ as my "record company" with iTunes. I get 65 cents per song. Screw the RIAA and the major labels. Check it out:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewAlbum?playListId=53814240

CDBaby

These guys are exactly what you're talking about. They stock your CD, process transactions, and send the CDs out for a small fee per disc. They also sign you up for digital distribution. My band's only sold 20 CDs but we're on iTunes. :D

CDbaby is hosting thousands of indie musicians (including me) who are donating 100% of their sales to the Red Cross.

This is not going thru Paypal and it is 100% legit. We get no money from these sales, just the satisfaction of helping out:

http://www.cdbaby.com/mnmlm/n/m/l electronic music
http://www.cdbaby.com/redcrossAll Music

CDbaby is hosting thousands of indie musicians (including me) who are donating 100% of their sales to the Red Cross.

This is not going thru Paypal and it is 100% legit. We get no money from these sales, just the satisfaction of helping out:

http://www.cdbaby.com/mnmlm/n/m/l electronic music
http://www.cdbaby.com/redcrossAll Music

cdbaby has a useful genre/category/mood browser.

The real reason it scares them is because it threatens to make them, the big labels, obslete. You see digital recording has gotten really cheap these days. You can build a home studio good enough to make professional sounding CDs for less than $5000 including computer, software, hardware, mics and room treatment. No, it won't be what you get at a real recording studio, but it'll be enough. That aside, you can buy time at more professional studios for amounts that most bands can afford, if they try.

Well, previously that wasn't the case, but it didn't really even matter because even if you did have a studio, you had no way to sell your wares without them. Retail chains wouldn't deal with little operations so you had to sign with big music if you wanted anything more than local exposure.

No longer, the Internet gives you the capability to reach the world, and cheaply. Now still most people aren't using it that way, the majority still buy music in stores, but that is changing. More and more are realizing that you can get music on the Internet, legally, and they are very excited.

Now if that move continues, and if indy groups and labels continue to unite in things like http://www.cdbaby.com/ well that represents a very real threat. If you start getting musicians that can just bypass big music entirely, then they are fucked no matter what.

That's the real worry the RIAA members have. Is that society as a whole will realise that it doesn't need them. That musicians will be able to produce their works, with no restraint, and that people will be able to instantly try those works, and buy what they want, without a penny ever going to big music, that scares them more than anything.

And it is comming.

And that's to spend your money on non-RIAA CDs. I suggest starting with http://www.cdbaby.com/ they claim to be 100% indy, direct from artists to them to you. I cannot verify their claims, but my experience does not lead me to doubt them. You also might want to check out http://www.cdroots.com/. They are a world music site. Note, however, they don't claim to be indy so you will want to check the labels to see if they are owned by RIAA members.

The reason to do this is not just to get yourself music you enjoy, but also because for a reseller boycott to be truly effective, you need to give producers another route to reach you. The less they make using the RIAA chain and the more others make via indy distribution, the more attractive it is to switch.

Okay, so they can keep their rights, they can upload to P2P networks themselves, and they can sell CDs through CD Baby or similar.

What, exactly, do they need the publisher for? It's certainly not to publish.

PS: d) comes after c).

Pretty much no band is big enough to get Apple's attention by themselves. Bands on major labels have to heft of their labels to get them attention -- if not individual attention, then at least the attention that comes from being part of an established catalog.

Luckily for indie bands and labels (my shameless plug: http://www.loud-devices.com/) all the bands for which CDBaby acts as "online distibutor" together constitute quite a formidable alternative catalog.

One has to wonder: if the major labels do succeed in forcing Apple to raise prices on their releases, might Apple and the artists/label of the alternative catalog be able to keep the old, psychologically much more attractive 99-cent price point? If so, the majors might just price themselves out of the huge iTunes market, sending all kinds of new business to the indies.

Cd baby Works very hard at getting independant music on the ITMS. Cdbaby works as an middle party between the artists who don't really know what to do and Apple who don't have the will to deal with a million artists on individually. Cdbaby then gives the artist a ridiculously large percentage, iirc they can end up with 60c from a 99c song sale.

DRM is a tool. There are positive and negative ways it can be used.

An open source, truly cross-platform DRM standard is desperately needed for content distribution to grow out of the current decidedly adolescent phase.

Content producers deserve to be paid, consumers deserve to get something for their payment that is more than they can get by downloading a file illegally.

There are many examples of DRM used to restrict what you do with your media after you download it...share it, and it won't work anywhere else. However, with a little unconventional thinking, there are other ways of using DRM that give the consumer rights they never had before.

Weed files are such an example. Just as the GPL gives the consumer rights they never had before, leveraging the restrictions of copyright law, Weed files use DRM restrictions to give the consumer the right to share and be rewarded financially for sharing. See http://weedshare.com/ for details.

Weed files make the expense of buying music into an investment. When you buy a song at iTunes, you cannot resell it, or get anything back for it. With Weed files, the cost is the same, but you now have a capital asset that you can give away, everyone who gets it can listen to it 3 times, and if they buy it, the artist gets 50%, and you get 20%.

This can't happen without DRM. Selling unrestricted MP3s is being done, but they you are depending on the good graces of the consumer to not distribute it, and if they do, the consumer and the artist get no compensation from it.

This open source initiative by Sun deserves support. The current Apple/Microsoft feud is intolerable for the industry. Ogg (For example) + DRM wold be a powerful combination. Otherwise, Microsoft is the only game in town for a DRM with a published API, and Apple trying to dominate with its unpublished API.

Affiliation: I own http://weedtracks.com/ which distributes Weed files, including over 75.000 songs from http://cdbaby.com/'s digital distribution program, and http://sharenewyork.com/ where anyone can share Weed files legally on the web.

Nice long rambling explanation there, but I can find used cd's for half the price of new. Used cd stores have overhead. I commonly find cds at CDBaby for $5-8 a pop. Certainly those guys have overhead and salaries to pay too. Downloads could certainly be cheaper. Of the 99 cents Apple charges at the iTMS, about 30 goes to the credit card processor, 10 goes to apple 10 goes to the artist and the other 50 goes to the record company, who by the way, have done squat diddly other than authorize Apple to sell the tune. (In contrast, unsigned Indies keep the lion's share of the 99 cents for their tracks.)

In short, I call bullshit. Explain it with gross/net margin, shipping, returns, price protection or whatever. We all know better. The prices 'the industry' charges are too high and the extra is going to the RIAA's Adolescents Litigation fund, the 'lobby congress for infinite copyrights' fund, the 'lobby congress for higher blank media levies' fund, and of course, payola.

Yet you sit there and tell me they aren't over charging even in the face of rock solid evidence to the contrary. Either you are badly misinformed or deliberately spreading lies. They are the thieves. They steal from me with blank CD levies. They steal from their customers with price fixing. They steal from the public domain with copyright extensions. I will never willingly give them another dime of my money. EVER.

Free & Legal Music
Boycott the RIAA
The shit list. Do no business with these labels.

but Apple's research appears to indicate that there more consumers like me than you.

CUSTOMERS

SALES TO END USERS ONLY
The iTunes Music Store sells products to end user customers only.

You will not find the word "consumer" anywhere in that agreement. The word consumer implies that I will somehow deplete my supply of music after it is purchased and therefore be compelled to buy more. Customers on the other hand have the prerogative to buy something else entirely or buy nothing at all. If you do not provide value to your customers, they will go elsewhere. The RIAA is simply witnessing that.

Check out Not Lame for a site with a similar indie vibe, though more geared towards indie/alt power pop.

CD Baby, by the way, is a great way for indie and unsigned bands to get online music service distribution as well as CD sales. The tracks off my band's CD are just about on every online music store (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) thanks to CD Baby. Did I mention how cool CD Baby is? :-)

Check out Not Lame for a site with a similar indie vibe, though more geared towards indie/alt power pop.

CD Baby, by the way, is a great way for indie and unsigned bands to get online music service distribution as well as CD sales. The tracks off my band's CD are just about on every online music store (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) thanks to CD Baby. Did I mention how cool CD Baby is? :-)