Popular music has a similar dynamic. The studio model is to grab a bunch of likely artists, get them in front of the public and see which ones get traction. Th

Popular music has a similar dynamic. The studio model is to grab a bunch of likely artists, get them in front of the public and see which ones get traction. This has been changing in recent years and is becoming less and less true as more companies start to import the Japanese pop music model. In Japan, for the past 30 or so years, they've churned out cookie-cutter idols in a machine-like fashion. They don't pick a person who'd make a good idol -- they design an idol that would appeal to their target demographic, and then they find a person to, effectively, act out the role. Musical talent is largely irrelevant: if they can't sing, just pile on the Autotune and vocal filters, or even use a vocal double. And after a few years, when their idol isn't cool anymore, ditch the old idol and find a new one. The idols are so fake and inhuman that when AKB48, as a publicity stunt, announced an "idol" that was later revealed to be a computer-rendering instead of a "real" person, it didn't really seem any less real than the current idols, and surprised hardly anyone. The companies that do this have very high success rates: when they put millions of dollars into marketing an idol, their idol becomes popular. And then they make billions. Why have a guessing game of whether your band will match the demographic when you can design a band to do so? This model has already existed in the West with boy/girl bands and such. Disney is probably the biggest company trying to pull this model off today, with machine-created "stars" like Miley Cyrus.