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Comment by jaysonelliot | Hacker News Reader

The author should distinguish between the concepts of gatekeeper and curator.

Is a music magazine or a radio station a gatekeeper because they can only showcase a limited number of artists, or are they a curator because they help the end user sort through thousands of bands to find the ones they would like to know about?

Even record labels have a role to play in the curation game. Smaller independent labels like 4AD, Wax Trax, Factory, SST, and Alternative Tentacles became valuable to fans in the '80s and '90s because their labels each created a "sound" of their own. You could confidently buy a record from a band you'd never heard of and know that if you liked the other bands on that label, you'd probably like this new one.

Curators provide significant value, and earn their keep. It's only when the curator turns into a gatekeeper and becomes a hindrance instead of a help that the problem arises.

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I think you still see the old spirit of 4AD in labels like Bella Union, but those labels have adapted and become more involved in promotion and management, as well as providing a general aesthetic credibility with a certain community, like SST, Alternative Tentacles, Touch and Go, Dischord used to, and still do to some extent.

I think if you look at SST, Touch and Go and Dischord in particular you see a business model a lot closer to what needs to happen now: keep recording costs low, cultivate solid distribution relationships, network like mad and treat the artists fairly and transparently.

What you mean actually adhere to good business practices?

Another option is more of a co-op model where multiple bands get together and share resources between them. Many bands in Canada operate this way. They tour together, give each other recording time in their own studios, work as studio musicians on each others albums and work with the same suppliers etc.

Here are two labels I love:

http://ninjatune.net/

http://www.rhymesayers.com/

I think there's plenty of room for small, focused labels.

Depends on the radio station. Most radio stations are gatekeepers because they pay what they are paid (directly or indirectly) to play. Late night low-audience-count shows are curators.

Smaller indie labels are still gatekeepers. In this age, the benefit you describe is gone because there is no longer any reason to be buying music without first listening to it.

That's not really true. There are time constraints and filtering out the good music can be a difficult proposition in 1 in 100 kind of scenario at best.. it's fatiguing.

Many djs, for example, rely heavily on labels to curate their offerings and once they find a label they like, they pay more attention to whatever they release than random discoveries.

But what's the reason to be listening to the music you never heard before? There is something like 20 milion different tracks in the wild. Why listen this unknown band with icky name (they all are) and not to something other in those 20 millions?

You still need to be pitched with the band to make you try listening to it.

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