Should you give your music away ?

[morbid]

Do a radiohead - give it away for free, but with a donation attached. Then everyone who feels like paying can, and you can track all the downloads, know how many people got hold of it and you'll probably get more than the 12p a track thats leftover after everyone and their dog has taken an percentage cut.

Radiohead made much more money as well, giving stuff away. They didn't have to pay anyone to distribute, a zillion people got their album and they got paid much more for their work than normal.

I think its a great strategy.

spot on - like I said I wouldn't pay for a mutate to survive release even though I like them - let me download them all as 320's or WAV and I would bung a quid or two by paypal no problem.

Or the Hydraulix complete back catalogue - thats gotta be worth at least a fiver. :)