The 7 lessons of distribution for authors:

Quoted: 1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
2) Piracy is progressive taxation.
3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
4) Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
6) "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
7) There's more than one way to do it.

Jonathan Coulton is the musician who has been touring with Hodgman. He's a talented, funny, and incredibly prolific artist who is choosing to make his living out of the main-stream music marketplace. Check out his website (which has many free music tracks) or subscribe to his song a week podcast (which is free). If you like his stuff, pay him for it.

His most famous song (it spread like wildfire online) is about computer programmers and it's called "Code Monkey." Some of you should be interested in that.

You can get three free Tom Waits tracks for free on this page at emusic.

Quoted: Bottom of the World / You Can Never Hold Back Spring / Road to Peace by Tom Waits at eMusic. MP3 album aownload, Americana

This is an awesome and very detailed review of eight free music recommendation services online. Well worth it to get a sense of the differences. Go Pandora and Last.fm!

Quoted: Review: Can a free online music service find new tunes you'll like? We tested out eight of these services: MusicStrands Liveplasma UpTo11.net Audiri Pandora Mercora Yahoo LAUNCHcast Radio Last.fm