[simba-hiiipower]

as much as i'd love that to be true, i just don't see it.

macklemore (and ryan lewis! - no love for the production, ever!) are the exception, not the norm, and i don't think represent the beginning of larger some trend..

i think the music industry is very analogous to startups in the tech space.. most fail, some make it alright, and some make it big. the difference between them usually comes-down to the right combination of talent, luck, and external support (from people who know the industry, have capital, and have been there before). in the startup world vc fills the support gap, in the music one it’s the labels..

as an aside: i genuinely do wish it were true though.. i could easily put together a really good case study charting the composition of a growing artist’s fanbase before and after signing to a major label. in the case of hip-hop, i’ve encountered countless data points where sentiment among an artist’s early fans takes a sharp nosedive down once signed and under the pressure from labels; this usually tracks song quality very closely and is a perfect inverse of trendlines for radio plays and itunes sales..