As someone that's done 'the band thing' and been involved with plenty of others who have and are doing 'the band thing' - if I was doing it now, as a smaller artist I would absolutely go to town with distribution by whatever means necessary. I'd get onto spotify, itunes, amazon, whatever. Hell, I'd probably even give the record away for free. For a smaller (indie/indie label) band, getting people through the door was always the biggest problem. Get them through the door, get the fanbase, you can sell them whatever you like.

When I had the numbers, I'd deal with the money. Long and short, I'd rather have 10 thousand people listen to my record and talk/blog/tweet about me / come to shows, than 100 people buy it and 10 people come to my show.