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The truth is that labels aren't needed if you are a savvy business person as well as a musician, but most musicians are not. They need help understanding how to advertise, where to do so, and they need leverage in order to get better deals. More importantly, whether they need these things is secondary to the fact that most of them don't want to do these things themselves and it would be a massive distraction from the main goal of making awesome music.

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Interesting. My understanding was that Maclemore et al actually challenged this model by hiring parts of a label to do the parts they themselves could not do and in that they ended up retaining more ownership. The analogy would be that they got (paid) advisors instead of taking on VC money.

The way you put it does make more sense: marketing, distribution, finding gigs is not what musicians do best, so they outsource that job and pay for it with "equity"/creative control.

My understanding was that Maclemore et al actually challenged this model by hiring parts of a label to do the parts they themselves could not do and in that they ended up retaining more ownership.

...which makes it sound like they have a lot of business sense. Many don't.

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