One of the benefits of what I’m doing for work (we’re building a media search and discovery site) is that I find all kinds of different music all over the Web. Sure, there’s lots of commercial music out there that shouldn’t be, but it’s a relatively small part of what’s there. The crawler’s incredible breadth has allowed me to find lots of new (to me) music from many independent artists who post samples or full songs on their Web sites. They know that their biggest problem is getting people to discover them. Piracy is a problem only for hugely popular artists. Small artists’ biggest enemy is obscurity.

A good example is guitarist and composer Randy Ellefson, whose music I discovered on an instrumental podcast. I’ve become quite a fan of his music (I like early ’70s rock,  which his music resembles), and I’m impressed by the way he’s making his music available. He allows podcasters (with permission) to feature his songs in their podcasts, and he also makes some of his songs available on his Web site. For example, he’s released two albums. On his main page, you can listen to four full songs from each album. There are also links where you can download a half dozen songs: three from each album.

Randy Ellefson, like many independent artists, understands that giving away a few full tracks encourages people to buy the rest. He also accepts PayPal as well as credit cards, so purchasing his music is incredibly convenient. If more artists made their music as easy to find and buy, we wouldn’t need the big record companies.