Can Music Artists Give the Middle Finger to Offline Major Labels?
I’m very interested in new models of promoting and distributing music on the Internet. I think it is in area in which we are going to see a lot of innovation over the next couple of years. Music like print newspapers and print magazines is starting to develop a larger presence on the Internet.
We have seen artists like Lily Allen (and M.I.A.) gain massive fan bases due to the viral nature of online social networks like MySpace. As soon as an artist gains a couple thousand friends or a couple hundred thousand song plays than the major labels come knocking.
I haven’t seen to many artists stay solely in the online space once they get popular. They seem to make the move to “offline” major labels quite readily. I don’t think they should have to make this move to brick-and-mortar major labels. There are hundreds of music blogs like Ma Fama (and Kidz by Colette) buzzing about new and unsigned musicians everyday.
But, these new artists haven’t been able to capitalize on the online buzz and stay solely online. Maybe it’s because no one has come up with a successful model.
I like to think that a model can be developed that will allow artists to stay online and not have to deal with the major labels.
Don’t get me wrong, artists will still tour and do live shows. The only thing that will change is that artists will have a more direct relationship with their fans instead of going through the off-line channels of promotion and distribution.
I will be looking into some online promotion and distribution music models in the future like SellABand to examine how well they meet the online music artists’ needs. I will also detail how well their models work when artists get popular and need the services that brick-and-mortar music labels provide.
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I pretend to have a real job, by which I mean I started my own company. 
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