I haven't bought a CD in quite some time. For me it's much easier to go to iTunes and get what I want, and I really don't want any more CDs in my house, they take up valuable space.
There are places that are selling high resolution audio, and they also sell CDs and mp3s. Chesky records is one such place:
http://www.chesky.com/ As you can see, they focus on jazz, which is a niche market, and that market is more likely to be concerned with sound quality than your average pop music listener with cheap ear buds and an ipod.
Personally, I don't think one should give all of their music away for free. Having a few songs as "teasers" or "calling cards" to get people to listen is one thing. But the challenge is, how do you get them to eventually spend money? For the foreseeable future, money is still the medium of exchange for just about anything you would want, and so it helps to have some. Why is music one of the only items in the world that is given away for free? That's an unsustainable business model!
As has been mentioned, the real trick here is how to get people to listen in the first place. Since it's relatively easy to create the product these days if you know what you are doing and have a reasonably modern laptop, the business then becomes about creating a buzz around your music so people have to go and check it out. At that point, you can ask them to sample some and then ask them to buy if they like what they hear.
There are many things about the "new" music business that resemble the old one, but the days of physical product changing hands are coming to a close. If you notice, some car manufacturers aren't putting CD players in the new models, they are putting in USB ports, jacks for hooking up mp3 players, etc. They obviously know something, because they don't make a move like that without extensive market research. We can tailgate on their research dollars and take notice of the trend.
There's a book called "Music Business 3.0" that is required reading for artists in this day and age, along with "FutureHit DNA" and some others.
There is so much music out in the world, that it's going to be difficult to generate a buzz, and it's really a full time job to promote it to the fullest extent in order to maximize the profit potential. Some artists have teams of volunteers and some paid part time, as needed basis staff to assist in the process.
As with any business, it helps to have goals. If your goal is to create a full time living from your music, then you'll have a much larger to do list than if your goal is to have some folks hear your music and a few of them buy it, hopefully. With any journey, it helps to have a decent map of the territory and a proposed route before starting out. I suggest spending some time on deciding on your goals and writing a preliminary map to focus your energies.
Good luck,
Mazz
