My co-founder and I have been working on a new music industry model. If you're around the Boston area and interested in collaborating than send me an email: [email protected]
I wasn't really a fan of joost. It was very choppy for me. All I wanted to do was see some Stella episodes but it kept completely stopping and starting the next one. A friend of mine said it was much smoother in the earlier releases so I'd assume that it'll run nice at some point. I'll give it another chance in a few months.
I took it that he meant that the artist wasn't willing to work at his music enough to gain traction and wanted a quick track to success by signing to a big record label. With that being said, I think that the majority of YC submissions aren't looking towards this as an only alternative but one of many routes that could be taken.
(took out the first paragraph I had here. I should have read the full article!)
People that are applying for YC definitely are just seeing this as another possibility and not an end all to their idea. I'm sure that a very small amount of people are going to give up their business if rejected.
The reason is because there was no other outlet that had the ability to make them rich and famous overnight. The major labels controlled all of the media outlets until the internet came along.
Nowadays hardly any band would choose a major label over a large independent. There is no benefits anymore. Anyone can reach that critical mass of users without having to use Rolling Stone or MTV.
The people that sign to major labels, for the most part, want to be rich and famous. They aren't trying to make a career out of their music but more a career out of themselves. If not then they would be playing a local club in New Hampshire on the weekends.
So, in my opinion, it's more about the artists being retards. They see that major labels are a fast track to millions of records being sold. They don't want to spend years in clubs to gain traction. They don't want to sell CDs out of their cars. They don't want to save up to produce their own record. They want to take the easy way out and have someone else do the work. It is their own fault for signing a major label contract that takes advantage of them. If they are incapable of seeing better outlets for their music then they deserve to deal with the horrible circumstances of being on a big label.
Once they start giving the artist's a bigger cut of the prices then I'll start to care. Right now 35% is going towards Apple, and I'm sure EMI is seeing about 70% of each sale. I couldn't care less if EMI and Apple make more money off of their artists and consumers. The whole DRM thing was bound to fail anyways.
HA! this is funny cause my co-founder made up a phrase like this but used Nirvana as the band. Create something that makes the industry readjust to you while I guess trying to avoid early death. I dunno he has some whole manifesto.