• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, November 15, 2007 12:02 PM

Rcrd Lbl (pronounced: Record Label)--a hybrid record label and blog--is going to post music releases for free downloading, unrestricted by digital-rights management software that limits copying. The company expects to enlist advertisers to cover costs. So far, Richard Branson's Virgin America airline, Nikon, and Puma have signed on.

The company is a joint venture of Downtown Records, the independent label behind Gnarls Barkley and others, and Peter Rojas, a journalist and entrepreneur who founded the respected technology blogs Gizmodo and Engadget. Its plans could be read as either a step forward for the ailing music business, or an acknowledgment that the once-thriving industry's core product is increasingly worthless as a consumer proposition.

Artists with songs on Rcrd Lbl won't get a cut of advertising associated with their music; they'll get modest advances for each song they give the label. These advances range from $500 a song for the least established artists, according to people who work in the music industry, and escalate for bigger names to around $5,000.

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