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If you don't like the RIAA, don't buy their stuff. There are a lot of really great bands on independent labels because of the economics of the music biz. They know they can make just as much or more money (and retain far more creative control) by being on a small label and touring. Shopping may not be quite as convenient because their music is often not carried by the big chain stores. It's worth the extra effort though because, unlike most of what the major labels put out, these bands don't suck.

Some great bands on indie labels include:
Sarge
All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors
Sarah Shannon (ex-singer from Velocity Girl)
The Dismemberment Plan
Future Loop Foundation
Helium
The Poster Children
Anna Waronker (former singer for That Dog)
Rainer Maria
Glade
The Jeyds

Some online places to shop for indie music include:
Insound.com
Parasol Records
Restless Records (Golden Palominos, They Might Be Giants, Flaming Lips, etc.)
Matador Records (Helium, Pizzicato Five, Bettie Serveert, etc.)
FuturePopShop.com

Speaking of specific labels, if anyone's concerned:

• Warp Records: Home of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Plaid etc. Unfortunately most of their major acts (the first two of the above list) are released in US by Nothing, which is RIAA, but most other stuff is released by Matador, which is not.
• Matador: Home of pavement, sleator kinney and others.
• Thrill Jockey: Home of Mouse on Mars US Releases, Oval, Tortoise, Sam Prekop etc.
• Others: jetset, road cone, kranky (GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR! = gnosis), Drag City ad infinitum.

There are so many great bands out there that are no where near the RIAA in any genre you can think of but glossy crappy pop, and I for one don't and won't miss that.

I'm noticing a lot of punk rock recommendations in the comments. Punk rock is fine and dandy, and very non-RIAA, but if you want to some other excellent music, Matador and Warp are good labels to try.

Matador has a ton of cool bands, like boards of canada, belle and sebastian, cat power, pizzicato 5 etc. I am reasonably sure they are non-RIAA -- I didn't find any evidence of it on their website, and they weren't on that RIAA members list.

Warp is an awesome "intelligent" electronica label. They've got cool stuff like autechre, aphex twin, two lone swordsman (also on matador). They are based in Germany, so there is no way they are RIAA. I don't think they belong to the European equivalent either, though I could be wrong.

Be careful though! Some of the albums are co-branded with major labels, for better distribution purposes I suppose. Aphex Twin for example, their later albums also have a little Elektra records stamp on them.

I believe Matador is independent. Gotta love Pizzicato Five.

I would suggest Matador and Merge records, two of the bigger "indie" record labels. These guys offer a lot of excellent music (as far as I'm concerned; check my CD List but more relevantly they are very artist friendly. 50% of CD sales go to the artist on Matador, for instance.

You'll also find that CDs from these labels tend to be a few dollars cheaper than RIAA stuff.

An RIAA boycott will be pretty easy for me to pull off... count me in!

So if a band who's on a big record label ends up having all their songs on napster, it's a form of promotion, but if the same happens to a band on an indie lable, it will hurt their sales? Sounds fishy to me. Although Napster is a bit much, I have bought CDs due to mp3s, mainly indie cds - because, guess what, they're still out there. Kill Rock Stars, for example, has one or more mp3s per artist up. Check out other labels too: The bottom of this page is a great start, includes Chainsaw, K, Villa Villakula. Others (some may be considered "inbetween") are Restless, Righteous Babe Records, Matador, etc., etc.

But something happened: the big labels found out about these small labels, thought they could produce more pablum, and bought most of them out. Here are some labels that do quite well for their rosters: Kill Rock Stars, K, Matador, Merge, Touch and Go, and more... And bands like Sleater-Kinney (kill rock stars) or Belle and Sebastian aren't exactly starving either. Sleater Kinney makes a guarentee of $3000 each show, and sells 100,000 of each record they put out. It's also not uncommon for bands on above labels to sell 6,000 to 8,000. So before you call it a night, don't count the little guy out yet.

Windows 2000 will be known as "Classic Windows." Microsoft's newest OS will be "New Windows."

When people realize they liked Classic Windows better than New Windows, Microsoft will discontinue New Windows, keep Classic Windows for the diehards, and furnish a new OS based on Linux, shipping under a made-up name: BGsani.

Not only did Tom Waits recently say that he'd commit to Epitaph (I believe the recent quote was that they are "a bunch of dedicated guys who actually care about the music that they're producing"), but Epitaph has been stretching its fingers past the "punk" scene: into blues and folk. So this doesn't just mean that punk will become readily accessable, but so will other genres.

MP3s for sale, well, I support, but I don't think they're the hottest idea. I've always been a big fan of music in general, and therefore a big "try before you buy" advocate. Sell the songs for 99 cents and you might have some buyers, but drop the bitrate or dub them to mono and put 'em out for free and you'll get a following. How many times have we heard Hip Song X on the radio, said, "Oh, I'll buy that album," then found out the album sucks, or the band is overproduced and can't play three chords live, or some other horrible situation? The way I see it is that MP3s are a nice way to reintroduce musicianship and integrity to the industry, things which have long gone unrecognized. They allow independant artists who are talented to get recognized and popular artists to have a chance to truly prove their worth. It's been said millions of times: set the water level and society will swim to meet it. Now we can hear Hip Song X on the radio and then go and find the rest of the album somewhere to determine whether or not its worth our $13.99 or greater. If it isn't, oh well. That band will have their moment and then fade away, perhaps faster than usual. However, if it truly is a great record that deserves notice, it will be noticed and bought and exhalted, despite what the big six and other critics think.

I'm just ranting, really, at this point, and we all know the virtues of MP3s. Epitaph is taking a step in the right direction. Now if Matador and Merge (Superchunk's label, with Neutral Milk Hotel, Rocket From The Crypt, Portastatic, Magenetic Fields, Ladybug Transistor, and Third Eye Foundation, amongst others) and Touch & Go (Jesus Lizard, Blonde Redhead) and SubPop (a whole buncha bands, even though the label tends to get sneered at) and, hell, Grand Royal (Beastie Boys' label, now with Lucious Jackson, Ben Lee, Butter 08, and some other fairly hip groups) would open up and do the same thing, we'd really be cooking with gas. Show the RIAA just what they're up against.