1) Whether or not they want to, they need to sell their music to survive, and since the label would give away their music for free, they would have to sell it themselves on the side. Or else we would just have a bunch of McDonalds employees trying to be musicians, instead of straight up artists.
2) Again, whether or not they want to sell it, something has to be sold somewhere.
3) Just because something needs initial funding doesn't mean that it won't make money in the future. Everything takes capitol though, that's just simply how capitalism works...
You're missing my point somewhat; the amount of money you make from CD sales after a label takes their cut is basically zero. Because in the days of piracy -- nobody can be bothered. Tours, performing is how an artist makes his money from his music. Giving out the music just takes one problem out of the equation, namely; 'How do I get these people to buy my music?' the answer my label would put out is, 'You don't even have to sell your music. Just be yourself.'
If an artist really feels he needs to sell his CDs as well as make tour money, then there are other labels for them. No good business doesn't have a basic philosophy behind it.
Ideally though, I'd like to see musicians be able to earn generation shares for creating free and remixable music. There already is a lot of free (as in beer) music out there, but there is _not_ a lot of free (as in open source) music out there. The only big band I can think of that releases open source music is Nine Inch Nails - and I could see them being interested in a project like this.
That's really true, and resonates with me a lot. As well as the part about instrumental music. Ideally the label would become a platform for all of these things to succeed; I'm just trying to start with the basics. Too much too soon would likely kill it in action.
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