At the crux of many of the RIAA's (or, rather, its members') arguments against file sharing is: they haven't been able to make it work exclusively for them and, therefore, it must be crushed forthwith - or at least, until they can figure out a way to use it to monopolise the online music business.

Maybe they should have a word or ten with Rich Egan, co-owner and president of the independent music label Vagrant Records.

Four years ago, writes Chris Nelson in his New York Times Upstart Labels See File Sharing as Ally, Rich Egan couldn't fathom the usefulness of Napster.

He hadn't heard about file-sharing services such as Napster, KaZaA and Morpheus and couldn't imagine how they could benefit his business.

But that was then and this is now and today, Egan says his label simply wouldn't exist without them.

"Even as the major labels of the music industry pursue file traders for copyright infringement through lawsuits and the court of public opinion, Vagrant and many other independent label owners cheer them on," says Nelson. "File sharing, these owners say, helps their small companies compete against conglomerates with deeper pockets for advertising and greater access to radio programmers."

How can that be?

"Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends," he quotes Egan as saying. "Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it."

As the music industry suffers through its third consecutive year of falling sales, a decline the major labels say is primarily a result of file sharing, Vagrant is one of many independent labels having some success, Nelson goes on. Of the 100 top-selling albums of 2003 through Sept. 14, six come from independent labels and collectively have sold six million copies, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. During all of 2002, only four independent releases made the Top 100 and together they sold 5.5 million copies.

"And in an industry where the five major companies — the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi Universal; BMG, a unit of Bertelsmann; AOL Time Warner Inc.; the Sony Corporation; and the EMI Group — have more than 80 percent of sales, the independents have actually increased their market share this year by nearly a full percentage point," he points out.

By no means have the independents escaped the music business's three-year sales slump but, "the sense of worry that permeates the mainstream industry" doesn't consume the independents to the same degree.

" 'Wind-up,' which is distributed in the United States by BMG, is one of the more successful modern independents," says Nelson. 'Fallen,' by the rock band Evanescence, has been a staple of the Top 10 for the last six months and has sold more than two million copies. Creed's 'Human Clay' (1999) has sold more than 11 million copies, making it the seventh-best-selling album since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

In recent years, major labels, much like the movie industry, have depended increasingly on first-week sales to determine whether a release will be a hit, Nelson states, continuing, "The cost of bringing a CD to the public, which often includes hiring a consultant to get a single on radio and a top director to shoot a video, not to mention the tab for recording, can run into millions of dollars.

"If a CD does not show smash-hit potential immediately, a major label is likely to stop promoting it to concentrate on the next possible blockbuster, sometimes even dropping the band. Independent labels will often promote an album, single or tour a year after a CD's release. An informal survey of independent labels that vary in size from tiny (4 employees) to relatively large (50 employees), and in genre from rock to country to hip-hop, found executives crediting their successes to developing artists' careers over the long haul rather than the pursuit of immediate hits."

A prime example is Vagrant's rock band Dashboard Confessional, Egan tells Nelson. Their first album for Vagrant, 'The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most' is also the label's most successful release, having sold 434,000 copies. But it took two and a half years to get there, Egan says, and Dashboard Confessional's third album for Vagrant, 'A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar,' was No 2 at its debut on Billboard magazine's album chart and has sold 256,000 copies in two months. The group is featured on the cover of the October Spin magazine and recently performed on 'Late Night With David Letterman'.

"An artist may make his or her best record three albums in, four albums in," Egan says. "We'd like to be there when they make that artistic statement."

Building an artist's career and building a fan base to support that career go hand in hand, Egan declares.

"Vagrant and Palm Pictures are among the independents that encourage file sharing," Nelson adds. "But even those who frown on it, like executives at Wind-up, Artemis and Definitive Jux [co-owner Jaime Meline raps under the name El-P], acknowledge that unauthorized downloading has been useful for exposing their artists to new audiences hungry for music."

He quotes Chris Blackwell, chief executive of Palm Pictures, an 'indie' label "manufactured and distributed by the Warner Music Group" as saying in artist development, file sharing — "it's not really hurting you". In 1959, Blackwell founded Island Records, the original home to Bob Marley and U2, "and likens file sharers not to shoplifters, as the major labels do, but to grass-roots promoters whose efforts eventually increase sales".

"You want people to discover your artists," Mr. Blackwell said. "You're building for the future."

And, "That's the chess game," says Meline of Definitive Jux, "to be able to hold on to the company and to still continue to grow while the rest of the industry is just completely going down in flames."