unsigned bands

[assorted]

this is a few days old so if somehow it's been linked apologies...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...om_s_revival_1

the question here is how sites like garageband are supposed to support themselves. people are of course willing to try out new music for free... but noone would really bother to actually pay for the cd... the most it would help would be the band through name recognition and maybe an email list if they ever tried to tour. but then what's in it for garageband?

is the answer to charge the bands? charging the end user won't work. but if the bands are charged the quality of bands on the site will very likely suffer.

i like these issues because without a shown working model that downloads can create $$; the anti-piracy arguement can hold water.