File Sharing from an indie artist perspective

Thought this article was worth posting, since the issues come up whenever we do the Songwriters and the Internet forums. Some good points in here, especially the points about artists never really making money from record labels in the first place:

XJ: “How do you feel about the fact that some of your fans are downloading your music for free?”

David Byrne: “It’s a mixed bag. Sure, I would love to have compensation for that. But the argument of record companies standing up for artists rights is such a load of hooey. Most artists see nothing from record sales — it’s not an evil conspiracy, it’s just the way the accounting works. That’s the way major record labels are set up, from a purely pragmatic point of view. So as far as the artist goes — who cares? I don’t see much money from record sales anyway, so I don’t really care how people are getting it.”

-Boing Boing, David Byrne launches internet radio station.

Here’s the whole article (there are several sections, you’ll see the links at the bottom of each section)