FAME IS JUST A DOWNLOAD AWAY

Despite a seeming barrage of lawsuits aimed to curb illegal filesharing, use of such engines as KaZaA, Morpheus and LimeWire are nevertheless on the rise, and high-profile old stalwarts like Metallica have upped the ante with their anti-MP3 rhetoric. But for some bands, like San Francisco's acoustic independent group Ten Mile Tide, the Internet isn't the demon it's portrayed as by large musical conglomerates.\nWith nearly nine million KaZaA downloads since its inception, numerous bands have benefitted. Ten Mile Tide has staged its first major nationwide tour, which will span 11 weeks and pull out all the stops, hitting major cities across the country. The band uses the peer-to-peer network, enormously popular among college students, to make its tunes available for free download -- and therefore at little risk to the individuals sharing the tracks -- thus eliminating the need for a major recording contract, and thus, corporate oversight. \nThey've made their stance on the issue well-known, from interviews on CNN and with large metropolitan newspapers to posting releases on their fan-driven Web site, www.tenmiletide.com. And they're quick to attribute their success -- tremendous by an independent artist's standards -- to the visibility gained by Internet exposure.\n"The whole culture of music is based around sharing music you like with people you connect with," Ten Mile Tide guitarist Jason Munning says. "Whether it's through making mixes, swapping tapes, burning CDs, borrowing records or trading MP3s, sharing is an integral part of music." \nIt's a philosophy to which Bloomington old-school favorite Rich Hardesty subscribes as well. Hardesty's a reputed advocate of filesharing (what IU freshman hasn't rocked out to his "Never Wanna Fucking See You Again" while mixing margaritas in the old dorm room blender?) and posts up-and-coming tunes on his public site, www.richhardesty.com. \nAnd for college rock collective O.A.R., who headlined a Little 500 concert this year and was recently signed with Lava Records, filesharing provided more than one way to get heard. \nSaxophonist Jerry DePizzo says online sharing boosted the band's popularity in more ways than one, while allowing it to grow creatively before radio airplay was an option. \n"Filesharing was a way for us to get our music out there," DePizzo says. "We embrace it, but we want people to go buy our CD, come to our shows and if they want, tape the live shows and share them with their friends. As long as people aren't gaining a personal profit from it, then it's okay."\nYet for some local musicians, KaZaA isn't the cash cow it's made out to be. \n"Getting your music heard by a great number of people takes either a lot of luck (radio play, major label promo, etc.) or, more likely, years of hard work and performances all over the country," Bloomington musician Brian Winterman of Brian Winterman and the Delusion Train says. "KaZaA doesn't help get music 'out there' any more than Joe Blow's Web page on model cars makes model cars the latest craze. I could put my entire album on KaZaA, but who in Tucson or Boston is going to look for it? I've never played there, and I'm certainly not on the radio there. And what if I was known via radio or performance in those locations? What if people there wanted to hear my stuff? If anyone is going to offer them free samples, I want it to be me."\nAnd while myriad record labels and companies voice opposition to sharing music online, whether through extensive propaganda schemes or hard-hitting Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawsuits, several independent labels have stepped out in support of entities like KaZaA, Morpheus and Napster. \nRich Egan, president and co-owner of Vagrant Records, told the New York Times in September that his label "simply wouldn't exist" without the necessary evils of filesharing. Much like the emerging artists of today, Egan needed a vehicle to get his music heard. Though skeptical at first of filesharing's inherent benefits, he tried the software -- and loved it. \n"Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends," Egan told the Times. "Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it."\nIt's a statement that seems to ring true on major college campuses, where an Ethernet cord is all students need to access major directories. For senior Paul LeVasseur, filesharing seems synonymous with college life. LeVasseur, who first became exposed to independent artists via the Internet while a freshman living in McNutt Center, says the impact file sharing has had on emerging artists is immeasurable. \n"Using the Internet as a medium allows their music to have significant exposure, which would not have been possible otherwise," LeVasseur says. "The majority of bands surveyed have commented that spreading their music via the Internet was key to their initial success."\nJunior Jim Hoff agrees. \n"File sharing gives them (independent artists) another avenue to get their music out to the people," Hoff, who uses his roommate's computer to download music, says. Hoff's roommate, Christian Jansen, played in the now-defunct Bloomington band Summerset, frequenting coffeehouses and headlining a few nights at Uncle Fester's House of Blooze, and Hoff says Jansen "must have approved of filesharing -- he had about 5,000 songs on his computer." \nAs prevalent as that approval seems to be, however, filesharing isn't for everyone. Major labels, facing a marked decline in record sales, preempting mass layoffs at music distributors nationwide, claim the popularity of filesharing sounds the death knell for large music conglomerates across the U.S. For some independent songwriters, like Nashville, Tenn.-based Carrie Johnson, engines like KaZaA and LimeWire thwart the possibility that their melodies will get picked up by major labels. \n"Filesharing just lessens the probability that we'll (songwriters) get our music heard by the right people," Johnson says. "If it's out there on the Internet without a copyright -- or even with a copyright -- that won't stop someone else from appropriating it for their own use."\nYet to Munning, the actions taken by the RIAA in its latest slew of anti-downloading lawsuits, aimed primarily at college students and specifically directed at more than a few IU undergraduates, constitutes unethical conduct at its most blatant.\n"The real ethical violation is the RIAA's new scare tactic of suing individual college students for disproportionate sums of money just to make a gruesome example of their control over the music industry," Munning says.