Abstract: Relatively little attention has been paid to the effect of digital music on amateur musicians and music distribution. Here, I examine the revolution that's on the horizon: sites like MP3.com heralding the eventual bridging of the divide between artist and listener while shrinking the number of record labels. In this article, I look at two such sites that host both independent and tagged artists: the larger and better-known MP3.com and the smaller, independent, non-profit Songfight. I examine how they each handle the challenges of digital music and their appeal to artists, while concluding that a change in the recording industry as we know it is coming. Much of the attention given to MP3 has focused on file sharing programs such as Napster and various "peer to peer" applications, such as Morpheus or KaZaA. Although such programs pose a threat to major label copyrights and the music industry as we know it, there is another side of MP3 that has received relatively little attention. Compression of digital music has not only enabled piracy of the major labels, but also, as one commentator put it, "off-off-off-broadway [sic] indie rock" [1] as well. Websites such as MP3.com, Internet Underground Music Archive1 and Ampcast2 provide amateur musicians with venues where they can publish their music without the interference of a record company, bringing listener and artist closer together. [2] However, in bridging this gap between artists and listeners, certain dangers arise. While the usual problems of artists trying to protect their songs from copyright infringement, scams, and unauthorized rearrangements3 arise, other issues need to be considered. These include posting offensive material, posting offensive and bad material, and the relative inability to promote one's music without the help of outside agents or the website hosting it. Additionally, the money offered to artists by these sites is not significant, making it difficult for these sites to completely replace record labels. In this article, I examine two such sites - MP3.com (which is a large, for-profit site) and Songfight (a smaller, independent, non-profit topical site), and compare and contrast the benefits and the pitfalls of each. Comparing the two, we can see that the ubiquity of computing has not only created new options for amateur music distribution, but it has also begun to revolutionize music distribution.MP3.ComMichael Robertson, a software programmer from San Diego, started MP3.