You know, as long as they kept the stuff free, I would be ok with seeing adds plastered all over the place to pay for royalties.

Pirate Bay are about to diversify and open the Video Bay.

Its a bit like YouTube but totally unregulated.

Ahh... I already know about the touring biz, and the whole radiohead stunt... But see, iTunes pays maybe 10 - 20 cents out of the dollar of the song... If someone would make a site where people could simply download music for free, and if it was ad-based (and the record companies didn't suck up money), and if there was enough filing, to where the artists got their 10 - 20 cents, and the website operator got his 15 cents, and they got a cheap domain name (.us .info domain names are 99 89 cents A YEAR), then EVERYONE would win.

Example, put as many ads as you can on a page (I've seen this done to earn bandwith on sites before)... lets say you put about... 100 ads on a page... (It sounds like a lot, but I have seen someone fit 1000 ads on a page)... Let's say for every view on a page, you get a good 5 cents on average (various kinds of ads, PPV, PPC, PPP).

For example, let's say someone wants to download "One" by Metallica.

Main Site (Stream/download) > Download > skip this ad page> Search page > Search Results (shows all albums from band) > And Justice For All... > One > skip this ad page > Go to download > skip this ad page > Downloading...

^ That would make a good 55 cents of income... Put a 1 cent of each song's revenue towards paying for the domain, leaving you with 54 cents of income... Put 15 cents of that into bandwith (more or less if necessary), resulting in 39 cents (give or take)... Split that 50/50 between you and the artist (19.5 cents each), and the artist will be more than happy... Also, even if the artist didn't get paid as much with iTunes, the "sales" would go up because it is free, so more "sales" would mean more profit, and considering the 1:3 ratio the RIAA claims, then "sales" should SKYROCKET by at least 200%!... which is how it usually works in most industries (AKA, the reason we have bargain bins) Also, this would make piracy redundant, so there is no reason why this shouldn't happen...

So you see, with the power of REAL digital distribution and advertising, the music industry does not need the RIAA and it's greedy corporations to keep it alive...

@L.C.E.C.:

That's a very nice idea, and I don't know anything about how advertising works, but some part of me can't help thinking "there is no way that it could possibly be that simple"

^ It would work, but the RIAA wouldn't let it happen over their dead bodies... They're too busy reaping in the dough for their Billion-dollar CEO's... And they've got their artists hanging by their noose of a contract...

I've never actually cared about this website. It was "just another torrent" website to me.

^ Ah... But it was one of the best... They did hilarious stuff like this:

http://thepiratebay.org/legal

And they also helped to make the movie: Steal this Film Part I and Part II...

I'm going to miss those. And truly Sweden did have sane copyright laws. Now the worthless crap the US and other governments of the world has enacted. Like the DMCA....

I would never have thought you would remotely even think that.

Ah... If only they had bought tha island like they were going to... Also, someone needs to archive all of those letters before they are removed...