Record Labels Debate

The whole INDUSTRY that you are talking about is what happened in LA in 70s. I don't understand why would you take it as picture of how things should be done. It has not been like that before and it's getting back to "normal" now.Most musicians play because they need to. Because it's the only thing that makes sense. Nobody sponsors their years of very hard work which they do voluntarily and with joy before they become great at what they're doing.Original bands

There are lots of examples of artists blowing up without labels (though some subsequently start their own or get signed) in the past few years by distributing their music on the internet for free. See: Pretty Lights, Girl Talk, Odd Future, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, etc. It won't be viable for every artist/band but neither is the music industry of old. You must bring something special because otherwise nobody will care.

I wouldn't call it extortion. The music industry doesn't produce the same quality or number of quality songs it once did. There hasn't even been any substantially new genres in two decades. It's much, much harder to make it big as an independent artist these days. Besides the monetization problem, which is a big one, you also have a big discovery problem. There's a lot of things competing for people's time and attention and you have to compete with all the other son

You're basically saying that "it hasn't worked before, it won't work in the future". This actually reminds me of startups.1) What other options you had in the past sharing and selling your music than joining a record company?2) If you're successful artist, why wouldn't you have a label? Labels would pay millions upfront and help you with everything. It's easy money, like an exit, even it hurts you in the long run. Probably most artists are not interested in building a business.We usuall

This is interesting on several levels. One of the big justifications for the major music publishers to take such large chunks out of record sale revenue (typically more than the artists make) is that they provide promotion and publicity for the artists. However, in this case the record label is hampering promotion, in service to a relatively tiny degree of financial gain for themselves.As well there is still this idea that signing with a big record label gets you something, some momentum that

A novel way to solve this problem is to stop signing new talent to the big labels.Some of the music I listen to is signed to smaller labels who have much more liberal views when it comes to distribution and piracy. They host their own online stores that sell DRM-free albums usually at 50% of the cost of what you pay to big labels on iTunes, in stores, etc.The vast majority of musicians and producers (i.e. not the Lady Gaga's or The Beatles or Michael Jackson) make their money by touring an

The idea of simply creating a different distribution mechanism (eg CDBaby) for unsigned artists so that they don't have to sign with a major label is popular with the tech crowd, but fundamentally flawed. It assumes that unsigned artists can all produce well recorded, popular music on their own.Most can't.A good producer can pick a rough artist or band and get something popular out of them, but it often involves both mentoring and investment in recording and promotion upfront before

It's a different market but it's still a market. There are people making money off Spotify and Soundcloud, including saxophonists and drummers. What's disappearing is the old record label A&R process where you "get signed" and are suddenly a millionaire, but that was never most musicians' experience.

It seems to me that the only way to end the labels' dominance over the music industry is to deprive them of their sole revenue source - popular and successful artists.What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? I presume that large portion of what the labels used to do can now be done very easily by the artists themselves.There may be an opening for a tech startup here (maybe there's already one (or more

They'll give them an advance as bait for an exploitative and crappy contract which may well be run in a dishonest way.Given that most sales are downloads or streams now, the only thing big labels can bring to the table is a nuclear level of publicity. And by definition, that's going to be reserved for a tiny handful of multimillion-selling household names.Today's smaller bands and artists - which will be the majority - get no particular benefit from signing to a big label.<p