Last month, Damon Krukowski and I discussed Spotify, the public exit of Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke from that platform, and the various challenges facing musicians who do or don’t want to participate in similar streaming services. Toward the end of the discussion, Damon and I both hinted at the freedom of going free, the moments when giving your music away is more profitable—in the long run—than letting another company sell it inefficiently and unprofitably. Damon expanded on his position in a subsequent article for Pitchfork, but neither of us was advocating that musicians play and record for free, in all scenarios, all the time: nothing of the sort. So before I hand this discussion over to a new panel, one clarification.

My band, Ui, released a clutch of records through Southern Records. These albums are no longer available on Spotify because, according to Southern, the costs of administrating the relationship were not covered by the microscopic amount of revenue generated. I believed them then, and believe them even more now. Because I have no illusions about a horde of people dying to stream instrumental music from the nineties, it occurred to me that offering high-resolution versions of the album for free (through a service like Bandcamp) would allow our music to circulate in the world, and might even sell ten or twenty copies of the vinyl sitting in Southern’s warehouse.

But we’re a defunct band that never experienced much popularity. What about an excellent, working band like Dawn of Midi, whose new album, “Dysnomia,” received a score of 7.9 in Pitchfork this week? (I’d say 8.9 but who’s counting?) This band uses a grand piano, an upright bass, and a drum set to make their music; touring means they either play venues with grand pianos on site (relatively common) or that they rent a very big van (uncommon, if we’re talking about small bands trying to drag around a grand piano). More to the point, their music needs to be recorded in a well-equipped live studio by a skilled engineer; Garageband and other popular home-recording software programs are of no use in properly capturing a mechanically traditional band, that is, despite an advanced aesthetic vision. Some kind of business model needs to remain in place, or we won’t have albums like “Dysnomia.”

These tactical questions are obviously different for Top 10 artists who can partner with telecommunication and cosmetics companies when releasing albums. To discuss how less popular musicians are going to survive, I asked Dave Allen, Jace Clayton, and Damon Krukowski to answer a few questions. Dave Allen is Director of Digital Strategy at North, Inc., a bass player, and a founding member of the post-punk band Gang of Four. Jace Clayton is an artist primarily known for his work as DJ /rupture, and is currently writing a book on music at the dawn of the digital century for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Damon Krukowski is a musician—Damon & Naomi, Galaxie 500—and a writer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sasha Frere-Jones: So here’s a recent peg, a long and detailed piece about Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and the economic details of his career as a musician, moving into and out of the major-label system. Dave, Tweedy’s experiences are possibly closest to yours, as you’ve been through many stations of this mayhem. Damon and Jace, you’ve also gone through several levels of business and non-business; and you both still play live regularly.

How do we think about spending the lion's share of your time playing and recording music when the chances of that activity providing a living salary are incredibly small? What is the viable future for marginal and independent artists?

Damon Krukowski: I think the Wilco model is a useful one for bands at smaller levels, not so much with regard to digital strategy but just for making sense of the business for oneself. Naomi and I started our own label when our contract with Sub Pop ran out, and, as a band, Galaxie 500 chose to move its catalogue to our label when that contract (with Ryko) ran out. Our reasoning was similar to Wilco’s: Since licensing had grown more financially valuable to us than record sales, why definitely give up half of the former for no more than a chance of increasing a slice of the latter? But there is a tradeoff in going with your own label, not only in terms of forgoing advances. Using our own experience as a guide, I would venture that Wilco’s post-Nonesuch records are probably selling fewer copies than they did before. So their gross may be lower—but in terms of net I’m sure it’s a huge gain.

The people Jeff works with are very, very smart and are always looking for new solutions to standard problems. Deb Bernardini (check out their label name, dBpm) and Tony Margherita are industry veterans who practice a kind of music-biz jujitsu, turning the aggressive moves of the major-label world against itself, leaving the band’s business affairs standing. Wilco now not only have their own studio, label, and staff, but their own festival, too (Solid Sound). In that way, the model they offer artists is a bit like the Dead or Phish, or Dylan in his current incarnation—they seem to focus not on expanding a band’s audience so much as working with the existing one as fully as possible.

Dave Allen: It appears that Tweedy has built an extraordinary machine and has been aided and abetted, as Damon points out, by some intelligent industry insiders who understood that Wilco and Tweedy were a strong brand. This is similar to the Radiohead “In Rainbows” scenario, where it was management who came up with the idea of the “pay what you want” model. Now, there’s always going to be folks who say, “Well, Wilco and Radiohead were on big labels, so they got their start there and were able to make it work in the new business world,” but that isn’t the point. Tweedy and Radiohead now own their own copyrights. Marginal and independent artists need to understand that they must hang on to their copyrights. Yes, it’s cool to have a Sub Pop logo on your artwork, but that doesn’t mean anything except to a shrinking audience of indie diehards. Owning your own copyrights might be considered cool if you think about it, and, by holding on to their rights, artists can remain outside a system that promises the world but delivers only debt.

At music conferences over the years, I have heard the refrain that musicians should be able to make a middle-class income and should be provided with health insurance. But really? I mean, so should migrant workers toiling in Oregon’s fruit farms. When one starts out, as did I with Gang of Four, the last thing on your mind is getting a decent salary or enough to pay the rent. That comes later, when you enter the “business of making music for sale.” I feel like music has come full circle—it was always hard to make a dime, income very rarely came from record sales, and touring was the holy grail. So now, with the level playing field called the Internet, there is an added dimension to the possibility of making a buck, by using the platforms to extend awareness of your music, to sell directly to fans, to make fans aware of your gigs, etc, etc.