What value does the music industry add to artist's work...?

[Lizzie Poppet]

5. You had me there for a sec!

Good one!

The music (distribution) industry used to perform an invaluable service to artists, the vast majority of whom are not remotely capable of handling the distribution of their (physical) products themselves should they be lucky enough to grow beyond a local fanbase. Even today, that's a benefit...but probably only to the tiny handful of mega-stars whose physical media sales are actually large enough to be a distribution challenge. The rest of us? The tiny levels of "hardcopy" sales can be easily dealt with ourselves, sad to say.

There is even less need of outside assistance with digital distribution. Services like TuneCore can get your music onto pretty much every paid download service for a very low cost. Other sites where you can charge for recordings are often part of a broader music-oriented site on which you'rte going to want to have a presence anyway (Reverb Nation, Bandcamp, etc.).

As has been pointed out, musicians can do pro-quality recording themselves these days, even those who use mostly "analog" instruments. Industry help with the cost of expensive recording studios is less necessary than ever.

It's no secret that pirate downloads hurt the industry end of things more than the artist end...but let's not pretend that the vast majority of artists don't suffer from it, too. Music as a profession has never been harder to pull off, and illegal downloading is a contributor to that. That practice isn't going to stop, and every "cure" I've seen proposed to curb it (like SOPA, etc.) is far, far worse than the disease. But people who steal music should at least be honest with themselves about what they're doing.