[coach]

Okay, having a great musical sound gets you exactly nowhere unless people know about you. I have heard some AWESOME local bands in Dallas, in Miami, and in other cities that I've visited around the country. And then I never heard of them again. Why? Because they did not have the marketing and business clout to get their name out.

There are TWO aspects to becoming a hugely successful band. First is the music. Second is the marketing. Both are full-time jobs. So, let me ask you this, would you rather have your favorite band spending all their time marketing themselves or all their time making good music?

You think NIN and RH are doing their thing without a label now? Bullshit! They have become their own independent labels. You think the drummer is now spending several hours a day updating their website? Their lead singer is haggling with the manufacturer about CD replication prices? Bullshit. They hired people to do that. Those people perform the exact same duties that a record label does. Therefore, why not call them a record label? They may be a record label of one artist, but they are still a record label.

And they have the money to hire those people in part because some big-name record label took a chance on them and plunked down a big chunk of change to do all of those services when they were first starting out and did not have the cash to do so.

So, let's leave aside these mega-rich guys and look at the new bands. The ones who cannot afford to hire their own platoon of lackeys to perform all the back-end work. Vinnie, you ask why NIN or RH should subsidize the record label's risks on new bands? Well, the reason is because the big-name bands when *they* were starting out subsidized the record labels taking a chance on Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. It all works out that way.

However, just despite the Karmic reasoning, the problem with doing away with the version of multi-artist record labels that exist today and moving towards a single-band label like these guys are doing is that it puts a much higher barrier to new bands. In the current/old format, all you had to do is convince some fat suit in the label office that you were good, and he would plunk down a quarter mill to help you get started. But with no record labels, YOU have to come up with that quarter mill or its sweat-equity equivalent, to get up and running.