I’m always on the look-out for new, interesting music services – particularly those that support us independent folks! VibeDeck appears to be a good, web-based platform for musicians to sell their music, directly to fans, without having to pay a third party (other than Paypal.)

Artists using VibeDeck will get a free web landing page, that includes an MP3 player. They can then customize the page and the player with images, colors, etc. Once set up, users can listen to, and purchase, songs directly through the VibeDeck page – at no cost to the musician. It always surprises me when services like this charge nothing AND, do not serve up advertising either – how do they make any money? I guess they will figure that part out.

Well, not exactly. I saw this headline and, being a musician myself, I immediately got concerned: Is the value of music about to drop even further than it already has? As others reading this article have stated, the headline sounds like Apple is about to give users the ability to download all the music they want (likely for a free). However, that’s at all what is happening. In reality, the goal here is just to allow customers who have already purchased a piece of music the ability to still “own” that music if they ever replace their current listening device. Currently, when I buy a song from the iTunes store, using my laptop, that piece of music is only available to me on that specific laptop. If I were to buy a new computer, and I wanted to play that same song, I’d actually have to re-buy it through iTunes. Lame! I think everyone has been frustrated with this. So, the goal here is to remove this obstacle.

http://mashable.com/2011/03/04/apple-unlimited-itunes-music-downloads/