I understand the flaw and don't disagree with what you say per sé but what I'm suggesting is exactly the same as how new and/or underground bands become big now. The old situation is: a band starts up, and behold they actually make good music. They get some fame in the neighbourhood and score some small gigs in the city. The small gigs are a success and they earn some money to record a demo tape. With that tape which they send around more people get to know them and they score some more and slightly bigger gigs and earn some more money for recording/equipment/income. At this time a record lable scout might pick up on them and offer them a real chance. They record a full cd, become popular, get marketing. This is where the misery starts. From now on the band earns pretty much jack shit by selling albums. They tour and get money doing that but they do not actually make money from selling records.

The new situation wouldn't be all that different, except instead of signing with a record lable they use the money they earned to set up a website, and market and sell the records from there. Now the records they sell actually makes the band some money. They can use that money for marketing and income, while also doing the usual gigs. If they really are popular they can use whatever money they want on more marketing nationally or try to go international.

My text is a bit rambly and has a lot of 'ifs' in it, but the advantage of this ideology is that when I buy a CD the money actually goes to the band, and not to the record lable. Buying the CD directly supports the band. Also, if the band just loves making music and doesn't want to go for the big dollars they can easily decide to make their CDs €11 ($19) which is half price of the normal album price here of €22 ($37).

You made a snooty remark about average joes that didn't state anything about your concern for your own tastes being left out and everything to do with not trusting other people's taste. Other people don't need your trust or care about your taste. If you are concerned that your favorite niche market would be left out with a new model, then say so. There was no need to snub other people's taste in some sort of grab to make you feel better about your own. I actually played Jazz for awhile, but oddly enough, I didn't feel the need to talk down to people who enjoy the Top 40 either.

Hmm sounds like me when my girlfriend thinks I've done something wrong again. Sometimes 'winning' an argument just isn't worth it

But please stop the arguing anyway. It will only result in a flame thread and while that can be quite fun for the ones involved, it ruins the thread for the rest. Besides this thread wasn't even about music originally.

Seems like they are beating pretty hard on dutch torrent sites. While downloading music and/or movies should be legal in this country (note: this is not equal to pirating) apparantly judges rule that sites hosting torrent files are not. The Netherlands aren't the semi safe haven they used to be for this kind of stuff. Interestingly though there is also some sort of agreement, for lack of a better word, that individuals will not be sued by law enforcement any time soon as long as there isn't a viable legal alternative available. Couple of notes: 1. I'm not sure if this is a law, informal agreement or whatever so I don't know what the legal value of this is. They can probably decide to do it anyway whenever they want. 2. While they won't send the police after us, probably because they are swamped with work already, other associations and companies still can sue you. 3. I'm not sure if this goes for my country or Europe-wide or something else. I'll try to look for a source on this.