The author claims "And I support record labels, because many of the albums I love would not exist without label financing, and I might not know about them if no

The author claims "And I support record labels, because many of the albums I love would not exist without label financing, and I might not know about them if not for label marketing and promotion." While this statement may be true about "the particular albums this particular author likes" it is untrue in general. A good song will get popular through various means. An artist does not need his life to be controlled by a middle man so that the audience can be advertised to. There are many ways in which the word spreads in the 21st century. The hard thing for an artist is to acquire the minimum artistic ability which probably means years of toil to reach a level when some one cares to listen to you. Making a song is a relatively inexpensive task. And once u have a reputation, you have mechanisms like kickstarter to fund your project. More alternatives will evolve as the recording industry dies.