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I'm a musician, and I've come to terms with the fact that from now on, music is free. I support other musicians by purchasing LPs and CDs and the occasional MP3 of other artists I like, but for the majority of our audience (the public), our music is free.

How do we, as musicians, make money on our works? By doing the same thing that any underground band has known for a long long time: merch. The money is in the t-shirt, the lighter, the sticker, the wallet, etc. People want that.

That, and vinyl will never die. It is definitely a niche. But for one of my bands, we sell a 7" EP and you get a free MP3 download version of it as well. For one price you get the high quality, inconvenient vinyl and the low quality, convenient MP3. Not a bad model, IMO...

I've bought a few MP3 albums off Bleep before they were available in a physical format, but damn it, I wish for my $10 for the MP3 album, I'd get a $10 coupon to buy the LP or CD...

My band just released a 45rpm record. We sell the record and when you buy it, you get a password to a protected part of our website to download the same content on the record in MP3 format, so you can listen to it on your iPod. The hipsters get the rad vinyl for at home and the MP3s for listening to in their car or on the go.

yeah, sure live electronic performances aren't interesting, which is a shame (although there are some, for instance Doormouse or Otto Von Schirach). However, I go to live electronic parties to speaker hug. Depending on the type of music you make/listen to, there's nothing better than putting in your earplugs, going right up to those 30" woofers, and just blissing out to the lows.

But overall, as a musician, I've noticed from being in bands over the years that you make the most money by doing shows and selling merch. Selling music hardly gets you any money in comparison to those outlets.

Promote using message boards like this one. Slashdot gets many hits, so perhaps if many people read this post they will check out my band, listen to our music, and buy our shirts.

But in all sincerity, we're starting our own label and going to focus on getting distributors to pick up our label. That way albums come out when we want, we get all the profit, and we still seem legitimate. There are services like DollarCD.com that allow musicians to get their stuff pressed for extremely good prices, then you just take care of the rest yourself. Pretty cool service.

And oh yeah, we rock =)

Promote using message boards like this one. Slashdot gets many hits, so perhaps if many people read this post they will check out my band, listen to our music, and buy our shirts.

But in all sincerity, we're starting our own label and going to focus on getting distributors to pick up our label. That way albums come out when we want, we get all the profit, and we still seem legitimate. There are services like DollarCD.com that allow musicians to get their stuff pressed for extremely good prices, then you just take care of the rest yourself. Pretty cool service.

And oh yeah, we rock =)

Promote using message boards like this one. Slashdot gets many hits, so perhaps if many people read this post they will check out my band, listen to our music, and buy our shirts.

But in all sincerity, we're starting our own label and going to focus on getting distributors to pick up our label. That way albums come out when we want, we get all the profit, and we still seem legitimate. There are services like DollarCD.com that allow musicians to get their stuff pressed for extremely good prices, then you just take care of the rest yourself. Pretty cool service.

And oh yeah, we rock =)

Promote using message boards like this one. Slashdot gets many hits, so perhaps if many people read this post they will check out my band, listen to our music, and buy our shirts.

But in all sincerity, we're starting our own label and going to focus on getting distributors to pick up our label. That way albums come out when we want, we get all the profit, and we still seem legitimate. There are services like DollarCD.com that allow musicians to get their stuff pressed for extremely good prices, then you just take care of the rest yourself. Pretty cool service.

And oh yeah, we rock =)

You're forgetting another key point about the ease of communication bit. Now that information of all kinds is easier to find, artists themselves are way more educated on the entire process of being successful than they ever have been before. There's information all over the internet detailing how the RIAA is an unnecessary second step. Frankly I think that artists themselves being smarter is having a much larger effect on RIAA sales than anything else... because more and more people are self-releasing, self-recording, self-promoting, etc, and succeeding at it. It hasn't really hit yet with mainstream music, but "indie" music has grown substantially lately, and more and more people are searching out small-label or independently-released bands. I speak with the perspective of being in a band that recorded our album ourselves on a $0 budget (all equipment owned by us or borrowed), sell online, at shows, or at local record shops, and have no problem with it. Fuck sitting around waiting for a record deal - it's not hard to bring in cash anymore doing everything yourself.