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It’s a great moment for musicians who want to be heard and a difficult one for musicians who need to be paid. Which didn’t prevent thousands of them from performing at CMJ — up to a dozen times in five days for bands like the Muslims, Women, Jay Reatard, the Vivian Girls and Pattern Is Movement — in hopes that sheer exposure will, sooner or later, pay off.

 

The marathon, which concluded on Saturday night, was created in 1980 by the weekly college-radio newsletter once called College Music Journal and now known as CMJ New Music Report. It started as a pre-Web way to share information, practical knowledge and contacts among the many do-it-yourself bands discovered and nurtured by noncommercial college radio, groups that at the time were just beginning to create lines of communication between local scenes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/arts/music/27cmj.html?ref=music