The original post (a year-and-a-half ago!) specifically addressed 'record deals'. Subsequent posts spoke to indie labels, issuing one's own CD, etc. Since then there's been some interesting comments and advice but it's all been light on one facet, IMO; the changed and still changing music business.

I've never been much of a fan of the record companies and their history of rip-off contracts, fixed prices and stunts like charging more for CD's which were/are cheaper to produce than the records they replaced. But the karma that paid back those actions has been a bit extreme...CD sales have taken a big drop and continue to drop (it can't all be blamed on weak songs and weak singers and auto-tune ;) )

Study up on what some musicians are saying about streaming music, most recently Taylor Swift ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/11/taylor-swift-squares-off-with-spotify-catalog-remains-on-rdio-pandora/ ). The very last sentence of that article; "...Pandora...pays on the order of 0.009 cents per stream of a song." :eek: