Excellent points, Mike and Tom. Some more food for thought:

- No one forces artists to lose 90% of their revenue to the fat-cat recording industry, RIAA, etc. It is a "pay me now" lazy way to fame that hurts artists (and their customers) financially in the long run.

- Most artists that "make it" do so by self-promoting via gigs (according to Tommy Silverman, see link below). So there does not seem to be a great benefit to "signing" with a record label.

- Music prices are high for CDs. Prices have decreased ($.99/track) for downloads, but reducing this further could help avert the "need" for consumers to share songs. And people have a right to fair use of the songs they have purchased, without being told that they need to repurchase music for every device, etc. by the music industry.

- Recording and selling their own songs directly to consumers is not a lot of extra work for artists, when you consider they could triple their take while still offering a much better deal than the recording companies and resellers like Itunes do now. It also is a "direct" way to link up to fans, and avoids the stigma of having to deal with fat-cat middlemen that sue music consumers, etc.

- This convoluted, PRS monitoring-based "solution" just seems to be one more fat cat lined up to take money away from artists, ISP's, and (less directly) clients of those ISP's. It also involves invasive packet monitoring and invading the privacy of users.

- If artists can triple their profits, offer customers direct DRM-free downloads for bargain prices, while avoiding the "need" for oppressive law suits/ISP-monitoring and the related loss of privacy and rights that this involves, would this not be a "better" approach?

Something to think about.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/tom-silverman-proposes-radically-transparent-music-business

Funny post, Tom, considering that many budding artists would rather be signed than not. And no one has to sign up with a label, it's by choice.

compensate the musicians for the money they have lost to to the greed and mismanagement of the Recording Industry -
anyone who sells a product and gives you 10% of the sales price of something is taking 90% of your money and shrinking your market by 90% as well.
Imagine milk being sold at £20 a pint and you will see how musicians 'benefit' from the RIAA and other parasites.