>>I'm not trying to diss the legal digital download sites - hey, I even >>work for one - but it seems like the opposite is now happening to what >>the gatekeepers of the digital revolution had originally predicted.
It still comes down to dance music being a niche market, and one that took some pretty heavy blows in the past 5 years. Digital distribution is taking cues from the rest of the dance music distribution world -- still extra cautious and focused on bankable labels/artists. The digital distrib we work with does a dozen releases a week, on average. They probably aren't too interested in unknown artists making unknown music, unfortunately. It's still not so easy to get into the digital distribution world; you can sell/give away files from your own site, but getting on the biggies still seems to require some connects. We applied to Beatport directly and they totally ignored us -- only when we signed on with a third party digital distrib did we get on, and it seems some distribs have more clout than others -- some can get you on the main section fronts on iTunes but it may take awhile, some can get you up and listed on sites in weeks while others take months. And, of course, regardless of format, most music consumers are still sheep with bad/no taste, they don't know what to like unless they are told, so the same big crap with the most hype/promotion wins.
