Except this worked before the internet too. I have a ton of albums from working folk musicians in cardboard home-made sleeves, with great production values on

Except this worked before the internet too. I have a ton of albums from working folk musicians in cardboard home-made sleeves, with great production values on the music and crap for polish so they'd cost $5. I found most of the bands I listen to from mixed CDs friends made for me. The Grateful Dead got rich off people stealing their music. The Sullivan Show, radio stations, MTV and clubs were letting people listen to music for free before Napster; together they made every big commercial artist in the last sixty years. The new thing the internet adds isn't "free music" or "sell things that are easily pirated for cheap". It's that big-names can do it and we can measure the results. Where are the glowing articles about how much extra money an artist made after adding DRM to their game, video or music? I don't think torrents wreaked the commercial market; I think they wreaked the bootleg industry (http://books.google.com/books?id=hUyMNhH_l-EC&lpg=PA236&ots=ioWBhqk9ON&dq=bootleg%20music%20industry%20100%20million&pg=PA237#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=hUyMNhH_l-EC&lpg=PA236&...). The people who says otherwise are self-interested and fail to offer the kind of concrete numbers that reluctant experimenter after reluctant experimenter produces from every creative industry. I will note that this is the only venue I saw this on; not from my friends or Facebook or Twitter or any of the other "viral" channels. It seems to me like it's already to the point where it is normal. It is working because this approach works, just like it always has.