"Who do these guys think they are? They sound like crap, why are there so many people watching them? They call this music? This is garbage! Why is this band so popular? This band is no longer relevant to me, they sold out because they're on a major now. Its bands like so and so that make me not want to be a musician." These are just some of the things I've been hearing while attending shows recently and while most of the time I would normally brush comments like this off, after the third or fourth show, it became kind of redundant and soon I became a bit agitated. While I fully believe in the first amendment and everyone is entitled to their opinion, I would like to shed some light on some of these comments. Also, purely my thoughts and opinions. Just because you're not hearing a certain band or artist on mainstream radio, doesn't always mean that they don't have a huge following, underground or otherwise. A lot of musicians and bands in todays music industry rely on the internet to acquire their fan base; and with the always growing pool of web resources such as Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and iTunes, why shouldn't they? With the ability to set up (mostly) free accounts, its the easiest way to market themselves. Billions of people are using these networking websites. They'd be stupid not to. Im not saying that record labels are no longer relevant, because they are. Though they no longer are the powerhouses that they used to be, record labels are still very much necessary. Record labels even rely on Myspace to discover new artists. Why would label executives want to leave their offices when they have the ability of finding everything they could ever want right at their fingertips. This leads me to my next point: Bands selling out because they assigned to a major label. Most of the time when a band signs to their first label, its usually an indie label or something of small stature. This is to get their feet wet and to learn