FU Metallica, file sharing is not what’s making you poor, your just old and washed up and lost your appeal and youv’e been selling out for much to long.

Take a look at bandcamp.com. They make it much easier to do what I said. Also, upload to last.fm and make at least 1 track a free download so people can grab the URL and promote your stuff for you on blip.fm (I promote a lot of independent stuff on blip, and that last.fm free download is usually the way I do it, linking to the bandcamp page)

Look me up on last.fm (app103) if you need a little help and more info.

Self producing, promoting, and marketing isn’t easy…it’s a lot of work…but it can be done, and it will put you in touch with your fans, which you can enlist their help to spread the word.

Good luck.

I am one of those people that listens to and promotes free legal music downloads, especially from independent artists. And I love CC licensed music that comes with the right to share.

There are a great many artists that are embracing the idea of free downloads. And more and more are moving into the area of self marketing, cutting out the middle man that the RIAA is, and that’s what the RIAA doesn’t like.

They want to monopolize the music industry till the end of time. They want control and a piece of the pie from every artist that records a song. In fact, they want a bigger piece of the pie than the artist gets.

They have a long history of cheating artists out of their fair share, and bullying everyone…from fans, to retailers, to radio stations, to artists. Do a little research into the plight of the average African-American artist from the 50′s & 60′s and how most ended up broke, but the labels ended up filthy rich off their sweat. They used to use Mafia tactics, where they negotiated contracts with these artists with a baseball bat…literally.

If you want to see real change in the music industry, and artists finally making the money they deserve, stay away from handing money to the RIAA. Don’t buy anything from their labels. Contact the artist and ask him if he has a paypal link and offer to make a direct donation. Then go steal his music with a clean conscience. If you can’t do that, then go see a concert and make sure you come home with some merchandise like a t-shirt.

Only purchase a CD from non-RIAA labels. You can find out who is who at riaaradar.com. They even have a mobile version of their site, so you can check while you are in line at the music store.

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Im with you The White. If you want to be making money in the music biz…. its time to try something else. Cuz the Average Joe, like myself, doesnt give a crap about how much less money the bands and their superiors or subordiantes are getting. WE want to save OUR money. IF that means I have to illegaly DL music, and other such things…. Ill do it. And I wont feel the least bit bad about it.

Another thing…. if a band gets into the biz just to become super rich… its likely not a band Id be interested in anyhow. So again….. FUCKEM !!

The Duck.

I would consider ColdPlay an ‘established band’ but I never listened to their music until they offered a free download of their latest single on their website. Established bands can still grow their fan base. The “download fan base” growth is just more noticeable with young bands.

As I said earlier the music industry is really changing, I think the bands that adopt a new business model quickly will have a see some major profits when it comes to “Music 2.0″ (I though I made up that term but it seems it has been coined before).

@Robin: You stay away from Miley. I’ve got my sights set on you and their ready to aim…

On very rare occasions do the bands actually rail against downloading, simply because the downloading mostly hurts the labels. Bands make their money from touring (as you said), meager per diems for airplay and sometimes merchandising.

Since you posted their photo, let’s talk about Metallica. They’ve certainly been the most vocal about this, even going so far as to carry lawsuits against downloaders. They’re also sizeable share-owners in Warner Brothers Music, so downloading does effect them via stock pricing. Musicially, they’re uneffected. They’ve sucked fucking balls since before the inter-web got popular with the kids and they’ll continue to do so because they still get paid.

The only possible thing DLing music can do is hurt the labels. And that would mean less Miley Cyrus. Is this a problem?