This sort of expands on my post about what avenues independent artists can take to sell their music. Trent Reznor recently revealed the sales figures of Saul Williams' last album. A whopping 1 out of every 5 people decided it was worth $5 to download. I have absolutely nothing against piracy, but when an artist puts something out there at such a low price for you, and you still would rather just download the free version or find a torrent, that's just sad. If people didn't like it that's fine (i love the album), but I know there are people out there that just plain feel that music should be completely free, and the artist is entitled to nothing. Ridiculous. Still, there were 28,322 purchases at $5 each. That's $141,610 in sales. Saul's last album sold about that much, but it was on a label, and I can guarantee he didn't see that kind of money. There's certain expenses I'm sure, but that's almost 4 times my annual salary, I could more than live comfortably on that. Obviously you have to have the kind of fanbase that Trent and Saul have to pull those kind of sales, but I'm not looking to quit my day job any time soon anyway.

Music is very different today because of the internet, because of piracy. I don't believe that it has to be a turn for the worse though. We as artists just need to adapt. Stop selling your CDs for record label prices for one, you do not need to be as greedy as they are. $15? Give me a break. The information is out there on the net for anyone to see, and they all know that you only had to pay a couple bucks, maybe $3, to get that CD pressed. This would be fine on a label, considering you'd only get a few bucks or something kicked back to you per sale, probably less. But if you're independent, and getting the discs pressed yourself, that much profit, while nice, is too much. $10? Okay. But you could even go as low as $8 or $6 and still make double your money, which could then go into supporting a tour, or pressing more discs.

I still believe that a physical disc is not dead just yet. Here's a new thought I have had.

1. Sell pre-orders of the album at your designated price(probably $6-$8 by the time I'm ready).

2. As reward for preordering, give them a digital copy of the CD.

3. Offer incentive that if you reach a certain number of preorders (100 maybe), that you'll get the discs pressed and send them out when you get them back, free shipping in the US, or wherevever you're from. (Will probably have to sell for closer to $8 to offset that cost though, but that's still a great deal).

Think about it, you sell at least 100 preorders, giving you at least $800. That's the majority of the CD Duplication cost. I think this model could work out well for the independent artist and his/her/their fans.