I just suspect that you don't want to live in a world where the only music that surfaces to the top or provides a living for its creator is one where all good musicians must also be astute business people. You miss out on a lot of good art that way.
Very true, I really don't and I'm pretty burned out on trying to convince a lot of the very talented songwriters and artists I know and sometimes play with that they can't passively wait on some label system to put them on a treadmill to success.
I myself have a hazy dream of a promotion/tech/PR/consulting company that can hand-roll technologies, web, mobile and such, tailored to the creative ambitions of musicians, to find new creative tools and ways of manifesting their visions that go beyond the album-tour-album cycle, which I also think is more and more a thing of the past.
I just want to translate YC into music. Interview people and make sure they're all insanely talented, super dedicated, and not assholes. Make sure they can afford rent and food for a few months. Put them in a room together and let them find their best co-founders (or bring co-founders with them), and finance the creation of a low-cost demo product. 3 months later, put each group on stage in front of the world's best independent label heads, and help them get fair deals from good people. One day, Radiohead will come along and say they love what we're doing so much that they want to give every band $150k with no cap and no discount. You almost don't need to do anything differently. ;)
