I thought this was a pretty interesting chart. If it's accurate, it's pretty sad:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2 ... rn-online/

it won't load for me for some reason. is it this chart?

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/t ... .html#more

Touring, merchandise and liscening is the only way for recording artists to make liveable money unless you're on an indie selling 250,000+ or a major selling 500,000+

Yeah, that's it bort.

Are there sites out there like emusic or iTunes for unsigned acts specifically? I wonder what it would take to organize something where the unsigned act pays some sort of fee to the site that then in turn hosts the downloading of their tracks/albums where all the money goes to the artist, etc? Is that even feasible, I wonder, from a practical business standpoint?

It isn't, at least from talking to multiple people around here who are unsigned or fully independent. The amount of money that they would have to pay a site could be better used by just touring and selling shit from their own site.
It's sort of the same logic on why most unsigned bands don't have road or tour managers either.

i just hope to make yard-mowing money anymore

why pay a service to sell/just host your music? if you're an unsigned artist, you can sign a direct deal with or administer your tracks directly to a digital distributor or vendor, the revenue of which they'll keep a percentage as their payment. but without the marketing dollars of a label behind the digital music – the distributor/vendor isn't going to actively market your product for you without further contribution – there's very small likelihood of it generating any significant income. not that those marketing dollars often recoup either.

Pfft. That whole thing stinks of effort, man.