Here's a, to my lights, quite inspiring keynote by Mike Masnick at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in march 2009 about music marketing off copyright and author's societies, and indepentently from major record labels:
Leadership Music Digital Summit 2009 - Entire Mike Masnick keynote presentation, 3/25/09 from Leadership Music Digital Summit on Vimeo.
This makes one feel like giving it a try, what do you think?