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The middle man is a load balancer for risk. The middleman makes a bunch of artists moderately rich, and they lose money on most of them and make money on some o
by ppod 5y ago
The middle man is a load balancer for risk. The middleman makes a bunch of artists moderately rich, and they lose money on most of them and make money on some of them. They take on the risk of letting an unproven artist spend a few years doing something that could turn out to generate little money, and in return they get a big share of the ones that do make money. Now, thanks to the internet, the ones that do make it big can cut out the middleman.
Now there will be no middleman to take on the small risks of many unproven artists, and because of the relentless greed and ego of Chapelle and Swift many young artists will never have the opportunity that they did.
- bombcar 5y agoIn theory things like YouTube and Patreon could provide that gap - but not sure it actually will.
- ppod 5y agoDon't get me wrong, I like the internet. It is almost free to record and publish material now, which probably far outweighs the value that is captured by the fat cats.
- bombcar 5y agoI do think there's a missing ground that is being lost - it was incidental to the publishers but they would provide production, editors, other various things that are seen as "not important". It takes an exceptionally bright young artist to REALIZE they need those things and go out of their way to find and pay for them. Neither Patreon nor Youtube is going to provide an editor and certainly not force you to use one - no matter how valuable it may be.
- SilverRed 5y agoThen don't use a label/publisher? There are apparently very low fee labels which just act as a tool to get your content on spotify without doing any more. But artists keep using labels so they are either making illogical choices or they are getting value from it.
- m463 5y agoBut youtube and patreon are the equivalent of the publisher. Nobody ever things about them.