Submission + - Recording Music without the Recording Industry
hephaist0s writes: "The 2008 RPM Challenge (to write and record an original album in February, just because you can) is about to begin, and hundreds of musicians from around the world have already signed up. Last year, more than 850 albums were recorded as part of the challenge, a testament to what can be done by independent musicians without a label, without the RIAA, and often without a professional studio: everything from an album made entirely on a Nintendo Game Boy to a Speed Racer rock opera, produced by both experienced bands and novice musicians, often in continent-spanning online collaborations.
One of the side effects of last year's challenge was the creation of one of the largest free jukeboxes of original music available online, built to stream on-demand all 8500-plus original, artist-owned songs — approximately 500 hours worth of RIAA-free music. Although RPM is specifically a month-long creative challenge, it's easy to imagine that grassroots, independent systems like this may foretell the future of recorded music and its distribution."
