OFF: the future of the rock industry (Was: A new richard meltzer interview)

[flossbac]

> On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Bolts of Ungodly Vision wrote:
>
> > go to www.furious.com/perfect/meltzer.html
>
>         Following up his stuff on the music business and that Courtney
> Love article a little while back, it occurs to me that the rock industry
> per se is about forty years old now and awareness is becoming pretty
> general that the major labels have all the punches in it. And it further
> occurs to me that when the movie business was a not dissimilar age, and of
> a similar corporate voraciousness, a bunch of actors got together
> and formed Equity. And I wondered if that could work in the music business
> - a kind of musicians' collective, something large enough to have market
> clout and work for the musicians. There aren't any labels of any size run
> by artists, are there? Could there be, and would they meet any success?
>
>         Discuss :-) Yours,
>                            Jon

There are several labels run by artists that have done well.  Fugazi has
Dischord Records, which is a fine label.  Fugazi do quite all right for
themselves, and are certainly among the biggest "non-mainstream" acts in the
world, and all this while never charging more than $5 per person for a show.
There is also Merge records run by Mac from Superchunk.  This label and band
are also making a living quite well without any outside interference from
the evils of corporate america.  I'm sure there are many many others, but
those are two that I know particularly well.
John Majka