[matchagaucho]

The "Super Artist" level of entertainment requires an army to support marketing, legal issues, mechanical licensing, PR, tours, accountants, video production, publishing...

Only the big labels are prepared to provide this support.

[dudifordMann]

Great point, even if an artist had 'n' skilled people to facilitate those roles and produce the needed deliverables, what would happen to those people when the artist becomes unpopular? so even if there is no way around having these established entities for the purpose of essentially allowing the artist to create, then is it a matter of reform? which really means not signing to big labels in the hopes that if enough artists do the same that the face of the industry changes?

[grammar edit]

[ancientworldnow]

A lot of my work is in music videos. I've got hundreds of millions of views on vevo and even a VMA winning video under my belt. There is almost no one in this industry who works for a single artist. This week, for example, I've got a video coming out from a big artist from a major label, a brand new band a major label decided will be cool, a major YouTube star (top 10 YouTube artist), a tiny artist on a tiny label, and a totally unsigned rapper (busy week). You'd be surprised how close the paychecks for a lot of these are.

Point is all of us work with dozens or hundreds of artists because outside of maybe ten mega artists you can't depend on a single "brand" to support you. Granted this applies to video more than other areas, but even agents and managers will have a few to several artists they work with.

[6stringmerc]

Traditionally yes, but the newer Artist-Management dynamic, most successful in Taylor Swift with Big Machine, but also well-respected in the form of Q Prime Management, can do most of those services and retain rights for artists that labels would traditionally take for themselves (e.g. publishing rights, which Q Prime tells their artists to retain). You're definitely not wrong. I think there are cracks in the system though.