I was thinking about this conundrum a bit during my MFA when I met Wesley Stace and he mentioned something about there being a stigma against self-publishing li

I was thinking about this conundrum a bit during my MFA when I met Wesley Stace and he mentioned something about there being a stigma against self-publishing literature that doesn't exist for self-releasing music. I think part of it is barrier to entry. Any schmuck with access to a computer with a word processor could write something that looks like a book and put it on Smashwords, etc. and claim to have published something. For music, it gets a lot harder: There's a higher cost to being able to get an MP3 available on the music services, not just on the part of the middle men who will gladly take your money to put things up (it's been a while since I've been in the music game so I don't know how big a role these folks play nowadays), but also just for the act of recording which requires the non-trivial purchase or rental of recording equipment, not to mention the training to be able to produce something that's not embarrassing (although the latter has not stopped more than a few people from releasing stuff like that anyway). Most people think they could write a book ("if they only had the time") but few people think they could record a song. But regardless, there's still the challenge of getting music heard, and I suspect that from minimum 500-CD orders of indie albums from the CD era, the majority are sitting in boxes in people's basements, garages and attics.