Let's imagine that for some reason at YC11 a band shows up. In their pitch meeting PG and team feel suitably Rocked and Rolled so he decides to throw in the see

Let's imagine that for some reason at YC11 a band shows up. In their pitch meeting PG and team feel suitably Rocked and Rolled so he decides to throw in the seed money for their studio time. The terms are that YC gets to keep 80% of the money from record sales (come to think of it, this happened on an episode of Dragon's Den UK). You download the song. Go to the concert. What happens to the share owned by YC? Do they make money? Do they deserve money? You're addressing a whole other issue here. First off, there is a movement among record labels to grab a portion of revenues beyond record sales (the 360-deal [1]). Second, you raise the question of whether record labels are needed at all in the first place. Similar to bootstrapping a startup, a musician can take a very DIY approach to their careers. In fact, one could argue that a musician is virtually identical to an entrepreneur. They build their band/company by creating music/a product that fans/people want. Startups are incredibly cheap to do today because of changes in technology--open source, cloud computing, etc etc. In that same regard, starting out as a musician does not require the millions of dollars from Warner Bros. execs that it once did either. Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) can produce quality recordings, social networks allow for cheap marketing, CD pressing isn't required for distribution, and on and on and on. As "founders", musicians deserve to be rewarded for their work. Not to be screwed over by record labels ("VCs")[2]#. --- # I am in no way suggesting that VCs regularly screw over startup founders [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal [2]http://www.negativland.com/albini.html http://www.negativland.com/albini.html