Good discussion points on all of this! It is ironic that on one hand, it's never been a better time for bands to get their music heard via the internet and social media, but on the onther hand it's never been harder for musicians to make any money with their music. The music industry has pretty much fragmented into so many areas that there is no one single place where people find out about new bands and listen to the latest stuff. Record companies (and the musicians) aren't making anywhere close to the amount of money they would in the heyday of vinyl records and CDs (before iTunes).

The whole industry is changing, and still in the midst of that change. I saw this article on the PBS site about a documentary that is covering this whole thing, talking about the role of online music aggregators, music blogs, etc. I haven't seen this show yet, but I'm anxious to see what they say about the future direction of the music biz:
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/the-ev...-in-the/60605/

--Jim