I'm a percussionist mostly. I've played basically every genre, though I'm tending towards jazz lately. I've been chewing on a long response for you here, but I

I'm a percussionist mostly. I've played basically every genre, though I'm tending towards jazz lately. I've been chewing on a long response for you here, but I think I'll save it for my blog. Instead, the short one: Touring only works at the superstar end of the scale, while recorded music revenue scales with the popularity of the artist. If the price of recorded music falls to zero, the labels don't have so much incentive to sign groups that aren't already at the touring-huge scale, since they're guaranteed to lose money on them... Also, if just giving away your music made you popular, MTV Cribs would feature a lot more unsigned artists than it does now (namely, zero). Since labels are the only ones in the music industry with the money to do the marketing that's essentially a prerequisite to getting huge, it's in the best interest of the artists for the labels to have the freedom to sign groups that are promising, but not yet big. That freedom comes from CD sales.