It's a little silly to say that record labels only curate content. Of course that's the easiest thing to replace. They also negotiate IP rights in every country in the world, handle any sample clearance, handle accounting for the publishing and sync copyrights on every individual song for every release, handle accounting of royalties for every credit songwriter and player for each track released across every service and distributor, front large sums of money to make recordings possible, front large sums of money to make touring possible, fulfill merchandise globally, market the music, handle production of product, handle distribution of product, mediate between the dozens of parties involved in nearly every transaction, and take the heat for the entire process.

Yes there are a lot of really bad record labels, but the hard working people at Sub Pop, Domino, Mom+Pop, and dozens of other indies are integral to the success of artists. Marginalizing them or even playing devil's advocate claiming all they do is content creation is silly. It's akin to saying all Facebook does is "make a website."

The music industry is far more complex than people assume — so while massive change is certainly needed, thinking that a simple HN upvote system is remotely related to the work of a label is silly.

Vilifying all labels based on the majors is like vilifying all startups on the behavior of only Oracle or Google.