yeah...i noticed i hadn't made the connection...
we have to buy into the dozens of little things just to be considered a serious artist. in this case a domain name.
you've got record labels owning the songs, you gotta pay for copyrights, pay for your website...etc. and when you have your itunes or whatever thing set up...they want a huge chunk of YOUR art. it's like...you sell something at some building, and the building owner wants 40% of your makings, and then the other 60% pretty much goes completely into every thing else. In the case for major label, you get less than a dollar for that 13 dollar cd, and you still have to pay headroom before you see profit.
i mean...we've payed for cd's, recording equipment/studio time, mastering, posters, webdomains, t-shirts, stickers...and because everyone else is doing it, we have to keep up.
what the heck? at some point this crap didn't even exist. and now because it exists, its the staple-must-have.
when will it stop?
i know...you wouldn't have a cd if not for an engineer or whatever...but, you wouldn't have anyone to record if it weren't for the artists. We all depend on other people. So one artist bows to it because we gotta eat, and so the rest follow, it becomes norm and we all stop caring. the whole system is going more more more and the artist is the one that's taking the shaft.