The Business Model of Indie

You ever heard dubstep violin?

Didn’t think so.  Check this out.  A friend linked it to me this morning.

What I think is interesting here is not that there’s someone that’s successful doing “indie stuff, and fuck the man,” but rather that there are two things missing from the conversation.

1. Publishers provide a useful service — marking, production, etc.  The problem is, they think they are gatekeepers.  This is one of the reasons driving the schism between the two — but I don’t think it has to be that way.  I think there’s room in the conversation for people who want to buy or produce indie and publishers both, if only both sides mature a little.
2. These success stories are non-repeatable.  If they were, then everyone would have a #1 seller on Amazon.  There isn’t a programmatical way to attack this yet, and once that’s worked out, the world will change forever.

I think the real winners will be those who don’t see indie as a religeon, but rather just a pretty interesting business model.  Anything that helps get better product — music, stories, whatever – to the people out there is a good thing, and indie is giving us some interesting patterns to learn from.