Over the last week, we’ve been working on organizing our own mini battle of the (indie) bands for 2005. I outlined the details here: Looking for bands/artists to play/promote and so far we’ve had some really great feedback, listened to some great indie music, we’ve scheduled 3 weeks worth of featured bands in 2005 and are working on more. What impresses me is the attitude of the indie bands, which to date has been overwhelmingly positive. These folks just want to be heard. They want to share their music. Here’s a quote from one artist when we asked for permission to play their band’s music:

yes we definately give you permission to play our music hell burn copies sell them for a dollar we dont care .These are our first originals as a band and weve been together less than a year so we dont really expect much out of them so feel free to do with them as you like.

I don’t think this is a phenomenon for only indie artists. There’s many RIAA artists too who are hungry for ears to listen. The RIAA has really missed what matters to the fans. There’s no reason artists can’t make and shouldn’t not make money, but the RIAA stepping in and stepping on the fans is so wrong and so against what most artists really care about.

I wish we’d done this mini battle of the indie bands sooner on the program. This might very well become a new annual tradition for the show.

• Looking for bands/artists to play/promote
• Jarett from Revel on the Indie artist perspective on music downloads
• Thrashed live radio voice
• Podcasters playing RIAA music is an expensive proposition
• Gene Simmons thinks more kids should have been sued for copyright theft
• RIAA on the offensive