kcbowman@oaklandnet.com wrote:
>"...basically, for the first time in the pop era, a musician can create 
>recordings for mass consumption with pretty much ZERO budget. Record 
>tracks on a home computer, make some mp3's, post 'em on a website, and 
>practically anyone in the whole universe has access to them."

Well, true except for the mass consumption part.  It's easy enough to make 
a home recording and slap in up on a webpage, but if you are a rock band 
and you want to make something sound nice and large and "radio-ready" like 
everyone's favorites like Weezer or Cotton Matther or Jellyfish or 
whatever, you're either going to need over a hundred thousand dollars worth 
of your own recording gear or else go to a place that does: a decent 
recording studio with an engineer or producer who knows how to get a great 
recording of a great performance.  I've heard some pretty good home 
recordings done on computers and home setups, but nothing that screams mass 
consumption, or even consumption on an indie scale over, say, 5,000 records 
sold.  Even most of the rock stuff you hear on your local enlightened 
college radio station was recorded in a studio.  A plug-in virtual 
compressor on your computer still can't hold a candle to a $3,000 Class-A 
compressor, for example.  There are plenty of musical trees falling in the 
Internet forest.  What is going to lead people who aren't fanboys and 
fangirls like ourselves to check out your mp3?  Well, promotion, which 
leads to reviews and airplay.  Even then, no guarantees.  Getting on the 
radar of public consciousness costs money.  Even for the 
musician-with-a-day-job hobbyists that most of us are, who are happy to 
dwell in our own little niches of obscurity, your "ZERO budget" statement 
is way misleading.

Andrew