Years ago, in East Lansing, we started a Musician Guild, on a similar principal to a collective, and it wasn't all that easy--the musicians were all excited about it, and we arranged concerts, auditions, etc--however, over time, the people who put the most time in found that they were doing more for the benefit of other people than for themselves, the meetings deteriorated in to gripe sessions and complaints about people who did the work, and, after a few well intended but unsuccessful efforts ( a big concert campus concert got snowed out, a community cable project died a borning) one day, nobody showed for the meeting, and that was it--

The reason that the music business is run by promoters of one sort or another, and not musicians, is that playing, writing, rehearsing, and practicing over the long term fill up the schedule--You can straddle the fence for a while, but sooner or later, you have to choose between being an evil, greedy, sweaty palmed, cigar chomping, lying, thieving promoter and a talented, gifted, misunderstood, exploited, underappreciated, and perpetually underbooked and underpaid performer--