Re:It certainly isn't any worse than the cartels (Score 1)

I'm sorry, but your calculation seems to be way off. Not every musician has to be a wide fan-base, mainstream "everybody's attraction" like Britney Spears: To have just 100,000 listeners is still very much, especially when you talk of indy/subgenre groups or foreign artists: For example, an Israely artist who to begin with has only 4,000,000 people as the maximum number of fans (that's the size of Israel minus the Palestenians and the religious folk). If one out of 400 sends a dollar, and the artist has 100,000 listeners, he would make 2,500$. If he sold just 10,000 CDs (out of 100,000!), each CD costing 17$ as it does in Israel, and counting 95% (!) to the record company, he would still make more than THRICE the number you gave (8,500$).