I happily noticed that many of my favourite bands and labels offer quite a lot of music online for free. And i am not talking about ugly 30-sec prelistening streams but full length and quality mp3 files.
Sure it would be nice to see some patent-free technology like ogg/vorbis but its a great first step anyway.
Another cool concept was implemented by finetunes.net, who sell high quality music (DRM free ogg or mp3) in a – in my opinion – fair pricing scheme. They feature many german and international independent-labels for several years now.
I think these facts show once again that great musicians (which happen to be non-mainstream most of the time 
) don’t seem to fear piracy or current technologies at all. So lets hope that the big companies won’t destroy it all and there is no problem anymore
Some example bands would be The Dresden Dolls, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, ..
