Quote Originally Posted by cossinnelle View Post
I think there are a few problems falling in an "all free" system :

- Labels make their selection and try to ensure a certain level of quality, that's their work and they have to do it well if they want to sell. Will quality remain if labels no more exist?

- In fact I think quality tracks would still exist, but that leads me to my second point : how will the djs find the music they like? will they have to go from myspace to myspace to listen to three or four tracks each time, making a prayer and hopping each time that they will at least find a nice track? When I see the time I spend on juno to find so few tracks I really like, I can't imagine what it would be if everyone would distrubute his music (even fo free) by himself....

- Last but not least, and that's the logical conclusion of what I've said above, that would be very hard for new artists to get their audience. Now labels can find new artists and bring them to light through websites that reach a large audience such as juno, chemical and so on...
without those interfaces new artists would stay in the shadow.
this is where i was going too. right now techno is in danger of becoming an oligarchy, where a very small number of established artists dominate the business side of things. while getting music to fans cheaply or even for free is great, if it becomes widespread, the digital labels will die. if they die, then the ability to reach a certain level of exposure will be completely in the hands of the 'techno aristocracy.'

like them or not, labels provide an essential service in sustaining some semblance of economic viability to techno beyond the stadium packers.

so yeah...henry please give some stuff away but please don't stop helping out the little labels!