Great article! Erroll Garner is definitely my favorite jazz pianist, I think he definitely deserves some more love in Jazz history. The dude couldn't read music and was improvising stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLLWN9x3Yis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OCJgP7_-fE

Edit: Erroll Garner's story is a great one if anyone wants to take a read:

I just find it funny, I was studying some of these piano transcriptions and I SERIOUSLY was disgusted at the stuff he was able to play. Like, one has to wonder if Erroll actually had 3 hands at some points, while practicing these masterpieces... Interestingly enough he was a short man... How on earth did he play some of these things?!?

"Short in stature (5 ft 2 in), Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erroll_Garner

You should check out Michel Petrucciani.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Petrucciani

Why are record companies still attractive to musicians today?

In the past, selling music meant having access to capital equipment (the vinyl presses), access to marketing budgets, and access to the record shop inventories.

Now, music can "pressed" for free by Spotify, Apple Music et all, shelf space is not limited (computer storage is cheap!), and the marketing can be done online more cheaply (I assume).

With all these stories of successful artists in the past (like Erroll Garner) and in the present (like Taylor Swift) being chained by their record companies, why do present day artists sign with a record label?

I'm sure I'm missing some key facet of the business, what is it?

Marketing. Superstars aren't (possibly never were) natural, they're the product of a lot of time and effort getting their look, their feel, their etc all just right. This takes time and effort, but when it works, the results are huge.

Think of Record Companies as the VC Funds of the rock and roll world. Yeah, it's possible to bootstrap, but why bootstrap when you can get a cash and publicity injection?

There are tons of great artists that you've never heard of. There are tons of mediocre artists who people can't avoid listening to.

The key difference between these artists is marketing.

Most of the money in music isn't from record sales. It's from touring and merchandise.It takes a lot of planning, marketing and resources. Which means a large upfront capital investment. Record labels provide that.

I wonder how advances on royalties might fit in here.

I would think if the advances are large they could explain why new artists seem so prosperous, where if they were steadily getting royalty checks it would seem like they would have to live modestly at first.

One last step in my query-posed-as-speculation: New artists using the posited advance money would explain why they "brand" themselves using pink vinyl wraps on their Lamborghinis and maybe that sort of branding is important to promotion.

It's been a long time since a complete unknown got enough of an advance to buy a Lamborghini.

Advances used to be seed funding, but now they're more like later series funding. Artists don't get them until they're up and running as a business, and they're treated more like investor input in exchange for management equity - politically and financially - than free cash.

In a very real sense, the music business pioneered the VC model. If you strip away the glamour from music, there are some very familiar relationships and strategies (and scams) on the business side.

From what I've heard, most of the money for artists comes from doing concerts and selling merchandise, streaming revenue is a drop in the bucket. Unless you can create a brand around yourself, you probably won't be hugely succesful. It's kind of like a startup that needs to hire outside management help once they want to grow beyond their inhouse management abilities.

Erroll Garner was a true master at playing piano. When Liberace played "Misty" it was something remarkable, but when Garner plays it that's another experience altogether.

Just watch this performance and be blown away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tAU3GM9XI

Eroll Garner is one of my most favorite pianists. Plus, as a Lindy Hop dancer it's super great to hear his music and dance to it.

Nowadays, I love Gordon Webster and of course... Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi.

Unreadable on mobile due to all the tracking.

Expect a lot fewer individuals to win against big corporations now that the conservatives got a stranglehold on the courts in the US.

Big companies legislating regulatory capture of markets is not restrained to any single party. It is however a growing problem. Changing your tone may find you more support in this overwhelmingly popular notion.