Standing outside Amoeba Music in Hollywood one day, third-year political science student Jason Tapia witnessed the cynicism of music consumerism. Armed with a handful of copies of his band Morrownow’s EP, Tapia offered one to a passerby for free, only to be rejected. Only after Tapia repeated the word “free” did the passerby pause to ask, “Oh, you don’t have to pay for it?”

Whether a sign of skepticism or absentmindedness, this reaction points to the confusion shrouding music distribution today. With the rise of the Internet comes new questions about charging for music, reaching new audiences and harnessing social media – questions that UCLA bands also encounter.

According to Joshua Halpern, a fourth-year anthropology student and vocalist of rock band Pangolin, the problem of profiting from recordings is bypassed by offering free music.

“I don’t think anyone is really willing to pay for a recording anymore,” Halpern said after opening for Dawes at Royce Hall on Feb. 17. “I definitely feel a little awkward asking close friends for money for what I view as something that brings friends closer together.”

The band’s decision also arose from an attempt to think practically about the spending power of Pangolin’s college audience.

“I think all the members of the band … have a poor college student mentality about it, and we’re not really expecting people to shell out their parents’ money to buy our little bedroom recordings,” Halpern said.

At any time, Pangolin keeps four to five tracks online for free listening and download. The band rotates between different recordings, putting one song up and taking it down a month later, a tactic Halpern described as “awkwardly secreting music.”

CDs play a limited role in Pangolin’s quest to be heard; burning kits can be expensive, the members’ computers are ill-equipped to burn dozens of discs, and, as students, the band does not have the time.

At best, demo CDs are a way for Pangolin to pass its music to label scouts at shows, but the band does not use the demo CDs to reach a new audience or make a profit.

Tapia said he holds CDs in higher esteem for providing fans with a tangible form of Morrownow’s music. Though face-to-face distribution is a time-consuming method, Morrownow tries to use it not only at shows but also by canvassing sidewalks outside music stores like Amoeba.

“There are so many competing bands in Los Angeles, and I’m sure a lot of people we passed out CDs to just went and tossed them in the trash the next day,” Tapia said, although, according to him, they did notice more people at their shows.

As far as online platforms go, Morrownow chose to sell its first EP, “Ourself,” on the website Bandcamp.com, which Tapia said gives musicians a creative control over their products that Myspace fails to offer.

The digital-or-physical distribution debate persists for slightly more experienced bands.

According to alumnus Dominick Duhamel, a former Daily Bruin arts & entertainment contributor who graduated in 2008, his band Kazai Rex saw UCLA as a built-in venue and a built-in audience. In almost four-and-a-half years Kazai Rex has played 55 live shows, mainly in the L.A. area.

While Kazai Rex recorded its music for free, thanks to bassist Danny Langa’s work as a sound designer, it spent a significant chunk of money pressing CDs, including its first full-length “Juggling Snakes.” However, the band is rethinking this method.

“CDs are a little bit ineffective, and CD sales are becoming a moot point,” Duhamel said. “(For our second album) we’re planning to forgo CDs altogether and opt for digital distribution through Bandcamp. We’re hoping to press vinyl for the sound geeks, people who want superior sound quality.”

Duhamel said the band sells more albums after a show than online, and often, the better the performance, the better the sales.

According to Adjunct Professor George Geis, who has studied the influence of technology on the entertainment industry, digital music has its perks for being relatively inexpensive and convenient, though promotion remains a challenge.

“If you’re going to do it yourself (without a label), you have to be very disciplined about it,” Geis said. “It’s not something where you can just hang around Facebook or Myspace. You have to figure out where your fans are hanging out.”

He said that unsigned bands should try to get reviewed and promoted on blogs that are popular with their audiences as well as promote on a daily basis because people notice consistency. Halpern said that Pangolin tries to convert friends into fans through Facebook chat, the “suggest to friends” button and even through texting.

“It’s kind of spam-oriented, but that’s not a bad thing,” Halpern said. “I don’t find any shame in asking people to at least check something out and see if they like it.”

Despite their varied marketing techniques, Pangolin, Morrownow and Kazai Rex converge upon the same principle: Money, while pleasant, is not the main goal and cannot get in the way of making music.

“I feel like the paradigm has shifted. None of us is exactly sure how it works, and exactly what the optimal way to distribute music is at this stage in our career,” said Reuben Moss, a fourth-year music student at Stanford and guitarist for Pangolin. “The bottom line is just getting it out there to as many people as possible.”