I don't know if the author was kidding when she wrote that "musical snobs" would likely agree that going independent is the best route. I don't know why you're a musical snob if you do this. In many cases, what options do you have other than going indie? Most of the time, big labels don't want to hear you no matter how talented you are unless you have, as she points out, the right look and crappy music to match.

I think the Milli Vanilli debacle proved just how underhanded the recording industry is and yet MV fans took it out on the guys who posed as the act rather than the labels who cooked up the whole thing in the first place. It was shit music to begin with so I don't have any sympathy for the fans who felt they were duped. They duped themselves just by buying that mass media marketed crap in the first place and it justifies my feeling that way about it. It's garbage.

The recording industry has always been a watering hole for shysters and cheats--most of whom are masquerading behind law degrees. All they've done is achieve their dream of a reducing the industry to nothing but money and art be damned. I mean, there's still good acts and there are still good labels trying to do the right thing but the mainstream has gotten very wide, very boring, very unoriginal, very formulaic and it's jealously guarded by crooked lawyers and execs who only want your money and are fully prepared to give you nothing in return.

What's scary is that a lot of people--young and old--have gotten used to it and are happy with getting nothing in return. They have no good ol' days of music to remember or have forgotten it and think this is an acceptable situation and see nothing wrong with it. These are the people that the industry wants to sell to and gears everything around.