The music-for-free genie is out of the bottle and isn't going to go back in ever, whatever price the industry or independent labels/artists set their downloads at. So anyone wanting to make money out of recorded music should make hay while the sun...erm... sets.

Personally I couldn't care less what the music industry does. They'll carry on selling physical CDs for a tenner and digital download albums for £7.99 as long as people keep buying them in sufficient numbers to maintain the profits they've grown accustomed to. And if they can't maintain those profits they'll stop doing it. Who cares?

The same rules apply for 'independent' labels and artists. If Navigator Records, for example, are getting enough people to fork out nine quid for a Bellowhead CD, good luck to them. And if at some stage in the future people stop forking out, well...who cares?

And if an excellent, low-budget, 'community-of-enthusiasts' operation like Folk Police can continue to happily survive selling a 22-track album download for £4.39 and tracks at £0.49, then that's great. If they can't (I would sort of care), they and the artists will presumably look for another way of getting the music out there and getting it noticed, or stop asking for money, or stop doing it.

It's ironic that at the same time that the internet led to 'music for free' it also led to musicians in their tens (more likely hundreds) of thousands uploading their bedroom creations and asking for money for them.

There are over 14,000 'folk' albums already on Bandcamp. They could all be brilliant for all I know, and I wish them all the very best of luck. But make money? If you're Sufjan Stevens, maybe. But for the other 999 out of 1,000, the laws of supply and demand and the 'music-for-free' genie suggest 'probably not'.