On-line collaborations

Plenty of people do it. Just set up an FTP site and you can all upload and download files easily enough without any specialized tools. You can just exchange the raw 24 bit audio files if you aren't all using the same DAW. Use a lossless compression like WMA to exchange the files, to significantly reduce the up/download times without any quality loss.

There might be some more elaborate way to do it, but plenty of folks use just simple file exchange.

Larry, given that I'm simply a home amateur: almost everything I do these days is an online collaboration. I'm currently working on separate projects with a fellow in San Diego, a guy in Connecticut, a friend I haven't physically seen in three decades in Ohio, a guy whose whereabouts I don't even know. Look at Larry Hansen: he's working with half the population of the northern hemisphere. Granted, we aren't accustomed to working with the pro equipment you have, the point being that it's exremely easy to do. I upload wav files to an online storage account (Yousendit, in my case). They download the files and import them into a project. Simple.
Mark

Collaborations on line are easy now. I just joined up with "Alice Sweet Alice" and I never even met the people face to face. We have a CD for sale on the internet also. The only really hard part is the advertising and selling of the product.

i've collab'ed a couple times and it's always added some depth to my music. however i've been approaching it as a "i need this track replaced with a live instrument" rather than a truly collaborative ground-up effort. if there is a business model, i see it as pro session musicians getting paid to do what they do over the internet rather than in a traditional studio setting (although for most live stuff they probably ought to have a decent-sounding room and good equipment anyway). i would certainly consider paying for pro-quality tracks to augment my work - i don't mind collab'ing for free, but when you are paying for it, you can be obsessively nitpicky and not feel bad

i think there is still a future for the album, but they will have to be coherently put together and without the fluff tracks or "b-sides" or people won't buy them. i think a lot of home musicians really don't understand the concept of an album as anything more than a collection of 10 songs, and i don't see an online market for stuff like that. just my opinion though.