I’m convinced (going on statements from people like Matt Cohen of The Reasoning) that independent labels are part of the old business model; recording is now cheap enough for bands to do albums on their own without needing advances from labels; the useful things that record companies did (such as promotion) can be done by individual businesses bought in.

I guess there is net music filtering of sorts with stations on Soundclick, as used to be on mp3.com back in the day-
anyone can set up station pages selecting songs they like, and users will hear
each song stream in turn.

Still, I’m not convinced that some kind of internet-based “wisdom of crowds” approach will work better than the current method music being filtered by self-appointed trendy cliques and corporate shills.

I’d like to see a myspace random radio player that randomly selects unsigned artists’ tracks regardless of chart position or who’s hyping them- if you don’t like it, you can just hit next to move on to another.

that way you could discover artists you like quickly and easily using your ears alone.

Interesting to see how things like last.fm work out – some sort of intelligent filtering that starts out on the basis that everyone’s tastes are not the same.

It’s slow to happen, but it’s happening in many areas. I think the Internet’s biggest problem right now is a reluctance to filter… gotta friend everybody that even remotely knows who you are, gotta follow everyone on Twitter that follows you. In blog aggregation, nobody gets left out… the net is about inclusion right now.

Eventually, folks will figure out that there is little value in blind inclusion and much value in selectivity. The filtering will happen.