Download music. 83% of musicians can’t be wrong.

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83% of Musicians Offer DownloadsThe latest survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that 83% of artists have provided free samples of their work online, and many say that free downloading has helped them sell CDs and increased the crowds at their concerts (where the artists actually make a buck or two). Only 5% say that it's hurt them. As for their own careers, more of these artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them. Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and...


Free Music Works for WilcoXeni Jardin writes in Wired about Wilco's "suprising" success. It's becoming a fairly common story -- artist gets shat upon by label, artist says "screw it" and puts out a solid representative sample of their music online, artist finds later commercial releases gobbled up by fans. In this case, they even raised $15K for charity from people who still wanted to pay for the material they released for free. What a concept -- let people hear some of the band's good stuff (not just some not-ready-for-album samples) for free, and they're more willing to buy stuff. Nothing new here, mind you -- it just used to be called "radio play". Except of course that several whole species of moneygrubbers evolved...


The Way The Music DiedIf you haven't already seen this week's Frontline documentary, "The Way The Music Died", you can stream it directly from their web site. (Thanks Harry for the head's up) It's interesting. They did spend a few minutes beating on the tired old spin of how much sales are down due to downloading (despite recent numbers that show the opposite), but they spent a lot more time on how the industry itself has killed the product, strangling innovation and continuing to try to stuff the channel full of the same old tired, cookie-cutter music. One thing they didn't talk about is how little of the CD sales revenue (if sales occur at all) actually gets into the pocket of the artist....


The Dawn of Legit Music DownloadsWell, iTunes Music Store on Windows has cost me a bunch of money so far… I like the organization, the samples, the ability to see related artists and everything—it was very easy to end up with a huge laundry list of backlist stuff that I’ve been meaning to acquire and add to my library, and so I broke down and acquired some of it. Not from iTunes Music Store, mind you… iTunes doesn’t share the iPod nicely (to put it mildly) with J. Rivers Music Center, which is by far my favorite piece of music organizing and iPod handling software. That particular pain in the ass, combined with having to deal with the music being in a different format (AAC)...


Promoting Music on the CheapAs long as I'm on about low budget music promotion (or promotion of low budget music, for that matter), it's worth mentioning Digital Music News' "Bubbling Up" chart. The "Bubbling Up" chart is a list of songs that are seeing increased demand on P2P networks, despite little or no radio airplay (and hey, you don't get much less radio airplay than most of the groups I listen to). Their point is that this is a "free" groundswell of interest, and should also result in increased sales of CDs with little or no promotion (other than the songs being available on P2P.) While I'm sure that this concept will slice little cheese with the RIAA (ummm... do the math -- if...