If you're a successful artist like Merchant (and there are many who are more successful), why wouldn't you do this yourself?

You obviously can afford a manager, so managing relationships with manufacturers, stores, concert venues, merchandising, etc. should be no more of an annoyance than it is now, right?

If you're Springsteen, why not do this? If you're Sting, why not do this?

If you only need to sell 50K units and be profitable vs 1.5mil to break even, why not do it? If you can release more records a year that sell fewer units each, but allow you to create more and promote less, why not do it?

I mean, what would it take? Let's pretend we're a celebrity called "wondering" (just an example). What services can we use that are already online? Who will print our t-shirts and tchotchkes? Where can we publish our info for free or next-to-nothing as often as we want to? Hmmmm...

Ultimately, does it come down to laziness?

Is there a growth industry here for Net-based recording labels? Or production/marketing/distribution teams that can cater to artists needs at much less than the dinosaur costs?