@ Eddie, sorry mate but you are living in the distant past! I'm a gigging musician (its my job)& the main way of earning a living nowadays is by gigging & (more importantly) selling CD's at the venue, THAT is where the money is, big record lables are no longer BIG record lables in the sense of yesterday. They no longer are in a position to rip off the public as before & don't have the margins they once have so are no longer in a porition to trade as they once did. The power has been given back to the musician if, & only if, they want to take the bull by the horns. The example earlier was selling 25 cd's at a gig, now a cd can be produced for around $2 & sold for $15! imagine $13 dollars profit x 25 = $325 for 1 concert on top of the gig fee. Now if for a gigging musician you play just twice a week, thats 104 gigs a year (say 100 to round things out) that is $32,500 a year just by selling cd's. Not bad by any standards & that is without talking about online distribution.......... Think about it, gigs are where the money is nowadays!