[discostu]

But a lot of very good music was made with little intention to make serious money on it which then exploded into mass popularity. By limiting your arguement to pop music, a very small genre by published quantity inspite of it's large revenue, you show the problem with your whole arguement. The entire progressive 70s music run (my favorite genre) was music released on the idea that there had to be an audience for it somewhere and a global distribution scheme would find the people, most of it didn't go gold forget platinum, but it was popular enough to draw in for a profitable tour and allowed the artists to hone their skills for the next album by being full time musicians. The free download model won't do that.

[Not Insane]

__The entire progressive 70s music run (my favorite genre) was music released on the idea that there had to be an audience for it somewhere and a global distribution scheme would find the people, most of it didn't go gold forget platinum, but it was popular enough to draw in for a profitable tour and allowed the artists to hone their skills for the next album by being full time musicians. The free download model won't do that.__

True. It will do something else. Time will tell what. And seriously, it could be better!

[Cooter]

The Grateful Dead has done quite well via the bootleg tape model.