Haha, yeah, it's enough work just trying to find these artists and the CD which contains the song from the SXSW comp.

After a few hours of searching, an artist site directed me to CD Baby, a vast repository of artists who make "indie" look like common radio stars. CD Baby brilliant browsing features (by genre/subgenre, mood, "type", locality, and combinations of them). It also has generous and quality audio clips of these obscure artists. Sadly, their search is (intentionally?) loose, often returning 50 results even if yours isn't in there.

But the cost of CD Baby vs. Amazon. CD Baby had 3 CDs from my list and another site had the 1 which brought me to this project in the first place. Total, $52 before shipping.

But Amazon had those 4 CDs and 3 others; 7 CDs for a total of $45. The trick? Used CDs from Amazon. Now, that doesn't support the artist and I'll probably be getting promos (barcode punched) which aren't supposed to be sold (I worked in a record store one summer). Trouble is, buying from 5 used CD vendors might kill me on shipping, eh?

[edit] Yup, $2.60 per CD for items not from Amazon, with no shipping combination. Brings the total to $58 for some less than legit CDs. Think I'll buy from CDBaby.[/edit]

So, tough call. I don't mind used CDs or promos, I like getting more for less, and it makes it easier to take a risk on these random bands. But I'd like to support them, hopefully.