>Thought this might be of interest:
>
>http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/

not to start this thread rolling again, but how is peer to peer 
sharing good for the artist who gets paid zero?  apple gets a much 
heftier percentage than the artist?  So does the retailer of the 
commercially available compact disc.  What is the difference?  There 
is no great solution to this argument, but it hardly seems fair to 
blast apple for making good music easy to download, while ensuring 
those downloads are legal.  Why not blame every retailer who makes a 
percentage hocking goods for the majors?

What is the real problem?  The music industry is no longer able to 
maintain blockbuster artists with gigantic promotional budgets and 
enormous production expenses.  Labels should be looking at ways to 
develop and promote a larger variety of music, targeting projects 
that can sell 10 to 50 thousand units with production and promotional 
budgets of $35,000 or less, with artists getting a larger percentage 
of the records profits.  They should then figure out how to get music 
to stores with a retail price of 7 to 10 dollars.

What would this accomplish?

If record companies were promoting a much larger stable of smaller 
artists, the budget available for legalized payola for each artist 
would be very small.  Radio corporations would be forced to develop 
smaller promotional packages.  They would then be forced to play a 
wider variety of music, helping to develop a more sophisticated 
buying public, bringing americans back to music as a form of mass 
entertainment.

The most important thing it would do is make the industry profitable. 
Any bookie will tell you, putting all your money on one side is a 
fool's game.  With  a large stable of thousands of artists generating 
profits of 20,000 and up per record, there is still a lot of money to 
be made.  When a record fails, it doesn't take the whole record 
company with it.  With small investments and the possibility of a 
record hitting it big, I really feel like the incentive to innovate 
and promote exciting and vibrant music would come back to the 
industry.  Today, when any kid with his parents visa can record a 
good sounding compact disc using home recording equipment available 
at your nearest Guitar Center, maybe the record companies should be 
spending more time figuring out who the next Les Paul or Brian Wilson 
is instead of looking for another pretty face who sings a song 
exactly like some other pretty face that sold a million records.

Frank.