Came across this open letter to Ms. magazine from Ani Difranco. Her thoughts on the seperation of art and commerce, particularly independant artistic commerce, which she pursues on a scale slightly larger than the kind of middle class artist scenario which I suspect (and hope) may be the eventual product and saviour of the music “business”. Interesting in any case.

Ok, it’s true. I do make a much larger profit (percentage-wise)
than the Hootster. What’s even more astounding is that there are
thousands of musicians out there who make an even higher profit
percentage than me! How many local, musicians are there in your
community who play gigs in bars and coffee shops about town? I bet
lots of them have made cassettes or CDS which they’ll happily sell to
you with a personal smile from the edge of the stage or back at the
bar after their set. Would you believe these shrewd, profit-minded
wheeler-dealers are pocketing a whopping _100%_ of the profits on the
sales of those puppies?! Wait till the Financial News Network gets a
whiff of _them_!