"Unknown Artists" (Score 1)

Since by definition an unknown artist is, well, unknown, who the hell is ever going to find their songs?

How about live shows, word-of-mouth, media exposure.. ?

For an artist to be TOTALLY unknown, he/she would have to live in a cave, as far as I'm concerned..

You can't even get signed to a major without doing your grassroots promotion first - unless there's some producer who has come up with some "marketable concept", like a so-called boy band and your hired to be part of that..

E-mail and web sites are making it easier to globally promote and distribute your product on a low budget (as we all knew already).

A piece of music has to reward its listeners, though, for this networked word-of-mouth promotion to get flying. On the other hand, if you just want to give many people a piece of *ish nobody really likes, then - well - you do need a corporate marketing budget.

Remember Mahir, a global celebrity? He didn't need a corporate funding to get rep.. I'm not saying artists should try to be more like him, but his case demonstrates the of the power of e-mail and web site.