Bob Olhsson wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>>From Dismuke: "... My guess is the artists themselves will	
>be the ones who will finance their own recordings and
>they will basically beg people to take/and or listen
>to them in the exact same way that companies today are
>eager to pay for and hand out their brochures,
>business cards and advertisements to as many people as
>possible."
>
>And where exactly do you propose that artists are likely to get this money
>not to mention enough experience to learn how to communicate effectively? My
>guess is that most will choose a different career except for the few who can
>attract corporate patronage. To a great extent this has already happened and
>the result is the new music that nobody considers worth buying we hear on
>commercial radio.
>
>Once you get past all of their flowery, romantic populist sounding
>propaganda about the internet, the Silicon Valley investment banking
>community has killed the goose that laid the golden egg in order to float a
>few more initial public offerings fueled by offering yesterday's music for
>free. The biggest losers are tomorrows music fans and the next generation of
>gifted performers.
>
>
>Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
>Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
>Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
>615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com
>
>  
>
*******

Bob, go to the Disc Makers website and you'll see that having about 500 
CDs pressed and packaged only runs around $1000 (and I'm being very 
general here) with many options. The rest is up to the performer, as 
quoted above. With the internet being what it is today marketing can be 
only a small problem.
As has been noted before, when the majors collapse the indys and the 
performers fill the gap and the businesses - the music busines, the 
record business & the publishing business -  begin another cycle. The 
technology usually rises to meet the indy demands within a few years of 
the major's collapse.
Effective communication can either be learned or taking on someone to 
hustle for them on spec, or for a percentage of the action. Thus we have 
managers, shills, promotions managers, accountants and all that hoopla.
We won't even get into the production and sales of the swag (where most 
of the touring money comes from)!
Mal Rockwell