I want to exchange money for music, but I can't figure out how

I'm a big Pandora fan. Ad-free music streaming at my computer with songs that match my tastes really well. They introduced me to a number of cool songs, like Party's Over by Son of Dork. I liked it so much I wanted to pay for it (shocking in this day and age, I know).

So I clicked the Buy from Amazon button in Pandora. Amazon wants to sell me the album--a UK import--for $37.49. F that noise. I go to the Amazon MP3 store (better than iTunes. Cheaper and no DRM). The song isn't available there. I checked iTunes and it is there. But now that I've tasted the sweet nectar of DRM-free downloads, I just can't pay for that crap anymore.

So here's my idea. Every musical artist, song, movie etc. should have a "tip jar" on the web somewhere. A place I can go and say, "Hey, I enjoyed your content so much, I want to give you a little something to show my appreciation." The nice thing is that I know 98% of the money goes directly to the artist. No middlemen taking out their "cut" leaving mere pennies on the dollar for the artist.

Is any mainstream artist out there doing this?

Update (6/30/08): TipJoy is doing a tipping mechanism for any page on the web. It's a clever system, with extremely low barrier to entry. I might just start using them...

Comments

[http://openid.aol.com/jmania2000]

There used to be something called FairTunes.com (it's defunct now) that did just that.

http://www.bizreport.com/news/66/