[izacus]

I'd still like to hear how is that exactly different or worse than the old "publisher" model, where everything is gatekept by publishing megacorporations and they decided what the taste of the decade was.

And by "they", it was a few executives in those corporations - it was never a meritocracy and those people never cared about music they peddled either.

So what exactly did it change here except the fact that now we're not at a mercy of a megapublisher to actually ship tapes/CDs across the world to hear a smaller artist?

[svnt]

Influential DJs in influential markets could discover a band or even a group of bands and drag attention other DJs would follow.

Maybe I am out of touch but that dynamic seems fairly lost, and we only temporarily discarded the mega publisher dynamic, which seems to have returned.

[dhosek]

Umm, gonna hard disagree. At least before the consolidation of media (whether publishers or record labels), the people who ran publishing houses and record labels did it because they loved books or music as appropriate. Publishing was never a big money maker and book and record stores fall into a weird part of capitalism where they don’t make a lot of money and they have a much larger number of distinct products than most other businesses do. I would guess that the local Target has fewer SKUs on the shelves than a modest-sized bookstore.

Note that Barnes & Noble has been successful since its last change of ownership because the CEO cares about books, not because he’s trying to squeeze every penny possible out of it.

[izacus]

There isn't a single story of a successful band that wouldn't hinge on having a big publisher exec approve them and work with them to change their music for acceptance. I think you're heavily rewriting history here.

[dhosek]

Off the top of my head, how about the Beatles?

[izacus]

What about them? One of their biggest early issues was EMI as a publisher not doing enough to promote their songs. Sounds familiar?

[dhosek]

I’ve not heard this claim, but even accepting that, it does not support your assertion, “There isn't a single story of a successful band that wouldn't hinge on having a big publisher exec approve them and work with them to change their music for acceptance.”