This Mainstream vs Internet argument

["Steve Lauder" <steve.lauder@elspa.com>]

Being a new-comer to the world of electronic music, I don't profess to be 
an
expert on mainstream or independent labels, this is just my un-educated two
cents!

I've been reading all messages on this "All major record companies are
leeches" debate since it first started with great interest, and the latest
case put forward by (tdbajus) about marketing using the internet is a nice
idea, but in reality will never really be effective.

How are people going to find your site?  With a search engine, you've got 
to
know what you're looking for before you can find a particular site, and 
with
so many commercial labels being on the 'net, and so many sites trying to
explain what Trance, Ambient, Trip Hop etc means, the chances of your site
being hit are pretty slim (Please note, this is only my opinion, argue 
about
it as much as you like!).

I have had an idea though how the mainstream and internet ideas could
combine....

Take a list such as this one - there are obviously a lot of quality
musicians on it.  If everyone was to submit one song for a compilation CD
(Kim would obviously be in charge of quality control), and everyone who
makes it onto the CD donates his/her  share towards the duplication costs, 
a
bit of money towards on-line marketing, and a bit of money towards getting
some quality flyers/posters printed (I'm sure there are many independent
record stores who would be happy to put a flyer up somewhere in the store),
then the chances of the CD getting heard of, listened to etc. are surely
greatly increased?

If you were to stream some exerts from the CD using RealAudio on the Web
Site, (the domain name having been advertised on the flyer of course), then
you will probably be getting your CD as well heard of as any other
commercial one.

While travelling round the independents with flyers, you could also ask
whether the store would like any CDs to go with them, and if the tunes were
good enough, the retailer would probably play the CD in the store too.

I think this idea could work, if given the time and effort, but I'm sure
many of you will be thinking that I spend most of my time in smoke infested
rooms with large groups of friends (a claim I will neither confirm or
deny!), and I generally don't know what I'm talking about.

Any replies would be appreciated, but try not to bruise my ego too much!

Laterz!

Steve Lauder