> Indie artists need money and the publishers that decide the winners/losers by controlling all the traditional distribution networks have no incentive to signal boost independents.
A publisher may wish to control distribution, but the cost to distribute any media (music, text, video, software) is nearly zero. The internet allows all of us to have a slush pile, to delve as deep for raw ore as we want. Some people want to go mining. Most don't and the traditional distribution networks ultimately market to such a person - and one way or another, we can't all delve through every slush pile. If you spend hours on SoundCloud or Bandcamp looking for music, you have less time to crawl for independent films or writing.
Any attempt to narrow the slush pile has the effect of marginalizing less mainstream efforts. If you read reviews or blogs to find things that seem worthy, then you are seeing what made it through someone else's slush pile. If you let the YouTube algorithm do it through recommendations, you are allowing Google to work through the slush pile.
A publisher may wish to control distribution, but the cost to distribute any media (music, text, video, software) is nearly zero. The internet allows all of us to have a slush pile, to delve as deep for raw ore as we want. Some people want to go mining. Most don't and the traditional distribution networks ultimately market to such a person - and one way or another, we can't all delve through every slush pile. If you spend hours on SoundCloud or Bandcamp looking for music, you have less time to crawl for independent films or writing.
Any attempt to narrow the slush pile has the effect of marginalizing less mainstream efforts. If you read reviews or blogs to find things that seem worthy, then you are seeing what made it through someone else's slush pile. If you let the YouTube algorithm do it through recommendations, you are allowing Google to work through the slush pile.