STARPOLISH: And maybe not just with music, but with reality .

RANALDO: Well I wonder how many copies those records sold. They might have still sold staggering numbers...

SHELLEY: Well, I don't know, but he lost touch with the public, and then something like Outkast came along. And Outkast could have never happened without Prince and a hundred other bands, but they touched peoples' lives and that's great. So I don't know if the Internet record label thing is going to work. You know, some of it's closer to us. Einsturzende Neubauten was going to do that, and they wound up putting the record on Mute Records, which is a great label. It seems like it's not there yet for the Internet only album.

RANALDO: It's getting there — there's no doubt it's changing; all that stuff is changing the face of the industry, but it's not there yet. Like you said, it's a tool, it hasn't replaced record stores — or records labels

SHELLEY: I think it's a great way to put out like secondary music in your life. Let's say we went on tour and we wanted to compile a greatest hits live album from our last tour, and didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I think an Internet version of that, where you still sold a CD but you sold it over the Internet, would be a great thing.

STARPOLISH: Sure. I see more bands now doing shows where you can actually get a copy of the live CD as you leave .

SHELLEY: Yeah they actually do that over at Maxwell's right now. I've heard of that.

RANALDO: I guess I have mixed feelings about that I guess. I mean I guess it's cool from a fan's perspective, that if you're at a show and you loved the show you can walk away with it. But bands that are doing that at every show... when we were touring with Pearl Jam a couple years ago they put out CDs from every show on that tour. I mean I guess if you're a hardcore fan it's a cool thing, but it's almost grueling at a certain point. There's no critical intervention there.

STARPOLISH: And there are just some bands that would prefer to have control over what gets released .

SHELLEY: I don't know if it's because those bands are bootlegged so much or...

STARPOLISH: Like Dave Matthews is doing that now, and he's always had a really pro-taping policy. So I wonder if the idea is that, "Hey I can't stop it and it's going to happen and it doesn't really bother me, so why not monetize it?"

RANALDO: But the thing is, we have a total pro-taping policy as well, and we're all for kids taping and trading it and it's partly a great way to keep our archive in good shape because we get copies of all that stuff. But when it comes time to sell it, I think we'd rather be more selective about the stuff that we sell because you're putting a certain imprint on it when you start selling it. And if you sell every single one, I mean, you're either doing it just because you know you can make a ton of money doing it, or you think you're god's gift or something like that and it's all really great. I don't know. I think for us it just wouldn't make sense. I think we'd want to have much more of a critical say in [it], and say, "Yeah, this is a group of songs that we endorse."