The pressure on artists

I'm going to tweet the original link but for readers who subscribe to the Dailies only, I've taken this whole piece from this post on Digital Music News:

"When you talk to artists and people that work with artists, they very rarely talk about tools.  Because they know, this is their business.  They know that it works best when the tools disappear.  If you have a great connection with a fanbase on a particular platform, it's not about that platform - it's not about Twitter - it's about your conversation with your audience and your relationship with your fans.

So, why then is there a glut of tools, why is there so much conversation about the tools?  Well, it's obviously about the money, it's about the investment.  In any industry, you're talking about - and investing in and focusing on, on stages like this one - the opportunities for growth.   And there's been such catastrophic decline in the traditional music business, the infrastructure is so badly broken, that we're turning over every rock looking for opportunities to grow something to replace it.  And as a result, there's tremendous pressure on artists.              

I mean we're asking so much of artists.  And when you talk to them and you talk to the teams that work with them, they do feel put upon, they do feel overwhelmed, they do feel that the expectations are so high.  Because they are supposed to rise up;- we have this expectation that there's this revolution going on, where they are supposed to rise up and replace what was lost.  And I don't know that that's a meaningful expectation or a reasonable expectation for us to be putting on independent artists and the people that represent them."

It's taken from this MIDEM keynote speech that is well worth watching. A bunch of experts chewing the fat!