Interesting article about that the role is shifting from being Artist centric to more revolving about the Fan. My thoughts about this statement is that it should be the Artist-Fan relation that should be put centric. It's not a one way communication, but the interactive relationship between them. To my opinion the Musicindustry for the last decades has been Recordlabel Centric. They decided in what artists to invest in and promote/market and were the gatekeepers towards Media and Retail. The MusicBusiness influenced and decided what the audience/fan would get. Mostly based on how they could make money from that. The artist would only get paid a relatively small part of the income generated by their audience as the record-companies had to make a lot of money to make up for the loss they made on artists that failed... Nowadays it's all about CwF+RtB=$$$ (http://www.techdirt.com/rtb.php). So the role of the old fashioned industry is declining and it's about how the Artist himself can go directly to his audience and deliver a service. So the Artist-Fan is now centric. The Artist and Fan can make use of services that help them to connect to each other and build an interactive mostly attention based relationship. The centralized music-industry that was focused on the Recordlabel is moving into a decentralized DIY2gether system where Artists and Fans both pay for services that help them to strengthen the CwF+RtB relationship. A good example of this new Ecosystem where artists DIY2gether is Nimbit and it's partners (http://www.nimbit.com/partners/#gigs). While working for the FanFunded music platform SellaBand I really saw the CwF+Rtb system working. The music itself was not always the main reason why a "Believer" invested in an artist. The more active an Artist was in finding new potential "Believers" through Social Media, the more "Part"s (unit of investment) were sold. When reaching a certain tipping point it became more easier for the Artist to sell "Parts" as then more reluctant other potential Believers invested in the project as they followed "The Wisdom of the Crowds". So this means indeed that reaching a certain amount of Fans will mean that it will kickstart a career, as before you really needed the support of the "gatekeepers" of the mass-media and retail channels. Currently we're still in the disruptive phase which means that you have to rely on both the old style of marketing/promoting music and the new Ecosystem. Artists are still very much focussing on artefacts like a CD or reaching the cover of a magazine which they believe can be reached by signing to (major) record label. But I think that soon the artists will much more adapt to the actual special treatment that fans want.

It looks like the artists must be happy to "win the jackpot" be being recommended to the 80 US labels of Fontana.. The artists themselves are very often too much focussed on the "Old Style musicindustry" by wanting to release a physical CD and being signed to a recordlabel. They should more focus on the opportunities given through the decentralized network of which SliceThePie is also a partner. The artist should DIY2gether with services like Tunecore, Nimbit, SoundCloud. Keep your rights and future in your own hands! Mars

Hi rob. The investors, called "Believers" are free to pull back their parts from the Public Enemy fund raising and get refunded through Paypal or to take their parts to other music projects