[TheHegemon]

> It will not work for conservative musical genres and pop music.

I don't see why it can't work for most musical genres. I have bought music from bandcamp that spans dozens of different genres.

As for pop music, good riddance.

I'd rather artists get paid because their music is good, not because some company is paying millions a year to market the hell out it.

[DarkShikari]

I think what the GP means is that it won't mesh well with certain outdated marketing methods used for certain target audiences. The genre itself is merely correlated with this, not directly linked.

Which is perfectly okay. We're in an age where music production is so accessible that a few talented musicians can make music of better quality than a top "pop band" and sell it with near-zero distribution costs. The production cost of a full album, including paying a talented, professionally trained vocalist, is now down to just a few thousand dollars.

As a result, there's a massive, ever-increasing supply of incredibly high-quality music that never touched a record label. The genre and style are irrelevant.

"Pop artists" these days are now more a matter of selling idols than selling sound. Let the music be made by actual musicians: Justin Bieber and AKB48 were never marketed based on their music to begin with.

[nedwin]

Exactly. A "one-size fits all" model isn't going to work in the fragmented music market. Pop artists & their labels already know how to make money selling music, this model is more in tune to the less-than-mainstream.