While major record labels battle Internet file-sharing to preserve the sanctity of music delivery media (CDs and whatever the hell will take their place), major artists challenge their contracts and less-than-major artists avoid the "entertainment industry" altogether. The consequence of technological advance? The triumph of cynicism? How about the manifestation of artistic impulses that have been around forever?
Like their ideological forebears, the Grateful Dead and Phish, the String Cheese Incident, a five-piece band from Boulder, Colo., subscribe to the "jam band" aesthetic of musical plurality that, in business terms, translates into a stridently laissez-faire attitude: Music is by nature free, and money is mostly a matter of channeling an audience's appreciation of it.
Music downloads are hardly a concern for a group that allows anyone to tape their concerts. This is a tradition among jam bands, but SCI complicate the tradition. Last April, they began releasing 3-CD sets of all the concerts they play.