Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…This is making me think though, reflecting back on that episode 11 months ago. I don't remember exactly everything we said, but I don't remember talking as much about the obvious point that this raises for me, which is that Taylor is a rockstar on the Internet. She's probably the first really, really big internet rockstar. The thing about the Internet is the markets are bigger than you can ever imagine. The demand is larger than you can ever imagine. Even in niche products like for Stratechery or Acquired, these niches are bigger than you could ever imagine. Now think about a mainstream pop star. The Internet enables two things. It enables the niches to exist so there are way more artists that can make a living today, I think, than if you think back to like the 60s or something where the labels would pick the 10 bands of the year and that's it. Why is it that Taylor Swift is bigger than the Beatles? Would the Beatles have had this much demand too when the only promotion that existed was from the labels, like the labels pick the winners and then those are the winners world? There are multiple things going on here. One is the disintermediation or at least the reduction of power of the middle men of the labels and everything else in the middle of the value chain. So much more of the value is now accruing directly to Taylor.…

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