At the Digital Freedom Campaign, we love TuneCore (totally platonic love, but love nonetheless). If you aren't familiar with the company, a short description of their current model, as described by Ars Technica, goes like this: "TuneCore is best known for its fee-based distribution system that lets you sell music and videos through iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, and other websites. After paying a small yearly fee, TuneCore customers receive all revenue from sales and retain all rights to their masters. TuneCore is best known for its flat $10 deal to distribute a single to 11 online stores."

This is a wonderfully simple and effective tool for independent artists to access the same digital distribution channels as major-label artists, at almost no cost and with no need to give up the rights to their recordings. Now the company is taking this model to the next level by giving bands the chance to monetize their website traffic by, as this Ars Technica article describes, having "sponsors pay bands what TuneCore calls 'the equivalent of a 'banner ad fee' to drive traffic to their web site.' Artists can promote free songs at their web sites, encouraging fans to visit the corporate sponsor to download the songs. It's up to the band to decide how they want to promote that link and get people to those sites whether by displaying an adbox or in-blog links....The traffic fees will be split between the musicians, based on the number of downloads generated. More fans means more downloads, which means more money for the band in the end. It's basically a way to monetize fame outside the traditional boundaries of record labels. "

Simply brilliant. Kudos to TuneCore for their revolutionary efforts!