But a lot of platforms and businesses -- not all of them, but enough -- aren't interested in selling business and marketing services to artists at a reasonable rate. They're interested in owning the artist's output, and charging rents on it that the artist will mostly never see; and much of the time they are still expecting artists to do lots of networking and marketing, not letting them "concentrate on their work".

I'm really suspicious of any platform (whether it's a business or not) that tells me it's the only way to reach a certain part of the market. Most of the big labels are completely irrelevant for the type of music I compose!

I'm also really suspicious of any platform that's trying to be "the only place people go for X". The truth is, I probably wouldn't have access to a larger audience if my music were on iTunes, because I am actually more connected to my (very niche) audience than iTunes is. My niche is small enough that iTunes (or whatever platform), in turn, isn't going to put any effort into marketing my work, because they'll get a much bigger return on something less niche. The same is true for the vast majority of the big labels.

There isn't one solution that works for everyone, anyway; but the solution that works for the "big fish" isn't the solution that works for those who make good art, but are a little off the beaten path. The solutions that make occasional rock stars are almost universally unsuitable for someone working in a small niche.

And the thing is, and this is why it's relevant to @heymattsokol's post: everyone starts out in a niche.

Everyone starts out unknown. And to get known they have to be on a bunch of different platforms, going where people are, trying to find the group of fans who are dedicated enough to follow them. You can't skip that work by signing with a label. You can't skip that work by getting a publishing deal. If anything, once you've signed with a label, or gotten a publishing deal, or whatever else? You now have pressure from them to keep doing the social media marketing and you also have pressure to them to create work that sells rather than work that's true to your own artistic integrity (obviously, some work sells and also has integrity: but some doesn't).

@heymattsokol's point isn't that platforms like Steemit will mean artists don't have to do that work: it's that currently, artists doing that work on platforms like Twitter and Facebook are doing work by creating and talking about the content that makes the platform valuable and being rewarded by, er, being forced to watch ads, whereas here they are doing that work and getting paid for it in currency. That makes a big difference, especially if you don't spend that money on toys, but on things like music lessons, or rehearsal space, or maybe even something smaller like website hosting. Early on in my experimenting with Patreon I started spending the money I earned there on demo recordings of my choral pieces, and it made a huge difference to the accessibility of my music. I wouldn't have been able to afford that without the (small) income that I was getting from Patreon.

And now? Well, I'm probably never going to reach the rock star career trajectory, and that's fine. But the existence of and proliferation of alternatives to the prevailing model of how to get paid for making music means that I can expect, with a lot of work, to have a much higher proportion of my income come from composing and related activities than would otherwise be the case. My portfolio career can include more composing and less teaching, or less performing, or similar. I can pursue otherwise unavailable educational opportunities: my composing is paying most of the tuition fees for my PhD (the rest is covered by a scholarship).

None of that replaces me having to do work, both in terms of workng on my art and in terms of networking. But it sure helps.