''What a label does with an artist is he says, 'OK, You my 'ho. And what I'm gonna do is give you your money, and with this money, I'm gonna put you on a track, which is out in a record store. And I'mma work your ass until you're burned out, busted or dead. And when I'm finished with you, I'mma get a new 'ho, because 'hos never run out, but artists do. So you artists, you're not worth shit but the money you can bring in,''' Ice-T said with his usual frankness.

''So me, I'm tryin' to tell the artist, 'While you 'hoin', get your motherfuckin' paper from these pimps, and basically you can pimp yourself if you have a website, and you learn how to get your own promotion out there and you learn how to get your business together,''' he said.

Ice-T said he had done exactly that by distributing his album ''The Seventh Deadly Sin'' through the Atomic Pop website. His own website has allowed him to find out what his fans think about his work and expand his audience. For example, after he received 500 e-mails from Moscow, he promoted his own concert there and played to 22,000.

Exploratory pop guitarist Reeves Gabrels [ tickets ], best known for his work with David Bowie, took things a step further and said he hoped labels would eventually be irrelevant.

''We don't really need major labels for the music. We don't even really need a tangible form [the CD]. We need to become comfortable with music existing as an intangible item just like when musicians play it. You don't hold it in your hands. You hear it in your ears...The web takes it closer to being an immediate experience,'' said Gabrels, who released his current solo album "Ulysses (della notte)" in MP3 format only.

Singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke [ tickets ] expressed dissatisfaction with her previous major labels (Elektra and Blue Thumb) but said that web users who downloaded music were still a much smaller segment than people who buy from record stores. ''I think we still need labels, for better or for worse,'' she concluded. Nevertheless, Brooke is selling her recent live album on her website.

If artists successfully use their web sites as publicity and distribution channels, they are in a stronger position to negotiate royalties and profit-sharing with labels, large or small. In addition, if they sell an album as a digital download, they can set a lower price than a retailer.

Gabrels believes artists can also turn the tables on a label and take the lion's share of the profits.

''If you don't offer it as a CD that [fans] get through mail-order, it means you can charge two-thirds the price of what they would pay at a Tower Records or anywhere else. It also means the artist can get, say, eighty percent of the money made versus ten percent made,'' he said.

But judging by the state of the digital music industry as expressed in other panels and speeches at Webnoize, the record industry and music technology companies seem entrenched in their current pricing and profit structure--regardless of their fervor for the ''digital revolution'' and their acknowledgement that their businesses wouldn't exist without the creators of the music.

In a panel about what digital music should cost, physical and online retailers showed no signs that they would lower the price of music liberated from the CD. They seemed content with a 649-person Amplified.com survey which said that people were willing to pay an average of $1.45 for a song and $2.46 for a favorite song.

For the panelists representing Tower Records, Wherehouse, CDNow and CDuctive, ''consumer value'' does not mean cheaper music. It means a wider selection of material, customized compilation CDs, and free unreleased tracks after a user buys a physical CD.

On the label side, the picture does not look rosy for artists. The majors say that they will not give artists increased royalties once they don't have to manufacture CDs. They also claim that the costs of running servers and preparing music for the Net will supplant transportation costs that are added onto the retail price of a CD in a physical store.

''The majority of costs in the CD is the studio time, the artist...as well as the marketing and promo,'' EMI vice president of new media Jay Samit said last month. EMI Recorded Music is currently digitizing its entire catalog--including classical, jazz, and Arabic and Southeast Asian music--and plans to introduce all its new singles on the Web during the first quarter of 2000.

''Your marketing costs actually go up in the sense that the world used to be a few million radio station; now it's a few million websites. Your actual physical cost of the plastic [for the CD] is the lowest cost out of all the costs: royalties are the same, everything else is the same. So if anything, you add in things such as tech support, digital infrastructure, e-commerce engines-- there's no greater margin,'' Samit said.

But not every major label voice at Webnoize was so conservative. Warner Bros. Records vice president Peter Standish took heat from indie label representatives during on panel on indie and major labels, but he was enthusiastic about the fact that the ''Jurassic'' majors now had to evolve.

''I haven't been this excited about the business since the Sex Pistols and the Clash,'' the former alternative-format label executive said. He noted that Web music companies were bolder and more free-wheeling at the moment, but when Wall Street comes calling to ask about profits, everything could change.

He also acknowledged that the Web could be used to build communities for artists and genres, but that exposure and street-type marketing weren't substitutes for great music.

''I've polished a lot of turds in my career... and the fans know the difference,'' he said.