flynn23 wrote:
I'm not a big fan of the major labels and their business practices. The system needs to change and the models are anachronistic at best. But they do provide a critical function in the value chain and that is promotion and marketing.

This is an important point. For me, the issue hinges on whether marketing and promotion expose me to more good music, or merely more marketable music. I don't have an answer to that. My gut tells me that marketing and promotion of the sort that the labels engage in is insidious and self serving and ultimately not that great for Music As Art, though it has been good for Music As Business. At the same time, would I have discovered, say, Nine Inch Nails without the exposure that was offered by that marketing? I don't know. I'd like to think so, but maybe not.

So it is an open question I think. At the same time, it's one that may be moot... I have trouble envisioning a future in which the big labels can have anything like the structure that they have now. When they had a stranglehold on the means of production, they were inextricable from the process. Now, while the promotional machine they command can and certainly does serve a valid business purpose, I'm not sure they'll be able to convince artists to give them the same (very substantial) cut of their success going forward, which ultimately undermines the whole system. Every massively successful artist supports tons of unsuccessful ones, after all. Everything's getting a bit flatter, but we're moving towards seeing it in greater detail, as I noted in this post a couple of months back.

RE: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails | Herald Sun