Arcade Fire, Nate Silver, disruption

This is the story of Arcade Fire. Personally, I don’t love their music, but enough people do. Same deal with Nate Silver. Not everybody knows his name, but enough do. That’s the goal. To amass your audience and triumph. That’s what you could never do before. Build and own your audience. You were dependent upon middlemen. This is what is wrong with the major label model of today, they take all your money and give you very little in return, telling you that without radio and their relationships at retail, you just can’t succeed. But if Nate Silver can succeed without the “Times,” can’t you? (source infra)

The Nate Silver Kerfuffle | The Big Picture: " . . .So where does this leave us? On the cusp of new superstars. All the oldsters were built by the old system, yes, even Radiohead, certainly Coldplay and Dave Matthews, they benefited from MTV and VH1 and radio airplay when it truly meant something. As for today’s YouTube stars…soon we’ll have more Arcade Fires, and some of them will have mass appeal. . . . distribution is free. But in order to truly be king you have to believe in yourself and play by your own rules. Disruption is continuing in the music sphere. Because the old game continues to wane. SoundScan numbers tank and are almost completely irrelevant, one wonders why Jay Z even cares. . . ." (read more at link above)

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