I am glad to see someone finally write this. I worked for one of the major labels for nearly a decade, largely on the business side. Frankly, I am fed up with hearing how "evil" the records companies were, and how exploited the artists were under the old system. When it comes right down to it, we invested in people. The vast majority of those investments never paid off. We made a lot of guesses about which bands and artists would be "commercially" marketable.
As a front employee, I spent tremendous amounts of time and effort evaluating up and coming artists, made the pitches to my bosses that we should invest in specific acts because they had talent and marketability. We spent money trying to help them create an image, and try to give them an edge to compete in the marketplace. Occasionally, it would pay off. Personally, I never saw what I was doing with quite the cynicism, and malice people usually ascribed to record label "fat cats." Our company executives, were like any company executives. They were reliant on all the hard work of their front line employees.
To me, the interesting part left out of all this is the fact that you could make a living in the music business. You could be skilled as a producer, engineer, session musician, manager, etc and make a living at it. Most of that money is just gone because artists do not get the venture capital to find their business anymore.
Interestingly, I make my living at one of the big tech companies now. (and I really like my job and make a good living).
