> It's never true. It is, and increasingly, but not obviously. Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form

> It's never true. It is, and increasingly, but not obviously. Labels have money and power. If you have enough money and/or power, you can always be some form of gatekeeper. It used to be studio access. Nowadays that's increasingly a commodity. What is increasingly more expensive is attention, so the labels shifted towards being publishers, building their own channels of distribution, to provide ears and eyes to artists in need. If an artist has already broken through the wall, and has the attention, labels are in a very awkward position, in terms of their value proposition. > Artists can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is not a viable career strategy for most artists. Which bring us to this part: There is no viable career strategy for most artists, period. Artists obviously don't wanna believe that, so they think of labels as the solution to their issues (they are not). Labels on the other hand only need artists that they think do maybe have a viable career strategy. The bigger the label, the more able and willing they are to take high risk/high reward bets, but relatively a lot less so than they did years ago, simply because it's not necessary anymore because of the dramatic democratisation of access to music production quality. Put simply: Labels want artist that don't need them, but also don't realise, that they don't need them. In 2022, if you are an artist, and labels are getting terribly interested, you are probably a lot closer to not needing them than you think.