Die, major labels, die, die, die!

Stumbled upon grooveshark.com today - another nail into the coffin of major labels and copyright in general. Basically, it is like a youtube for music, but with a recommender system and iTunes-like interface. You can upload, search, organize (even download) music. And they have a lot of it. Most of the stuff I listen to can be easily found there. Legally, they work as youtube. Contracts with some labels and agreement to remove content if there is no contract and label (copyright owner) complains. Economically, they get revenues from ad's and from VIP subscription (3$ a month). Grooveshark also allows an artist to upload his own tracks, advertise them select similar artist to allow recommender system to perform well, e.t.c (I'm not sure whether they would pay you if your music is being listened to, but it is a next step for sure). This is it - no more major labels shit. Music is produced at a speed of thousands of tracks a day. The only reason majors where having it nice (~10 years ago) is that they had big media, like TV and radio, for themselves, where they could advertise themselves and that oldschool "physical" shops where going for mainstream, since it sells best. Now with internet (and it was already true ~5 years ago) you don't need a shop - amazon, iTunes would sell anything, since they don't have storage problems and can go for the infamous "long tail". There are hundreds of blogs and forums uploading hundreds of tracks for free every day. But search, till recently, was still a problem. One can hardly formulate his music tastes in a google-type query, so that sources where mostly used by "educated" public. I would guess, that iTunes and Amazon where still selling, mostly, mainstream records from majors, since the TV and radio where the main source of music education for majority of people. But online players with giant collection and equipped with a recommender system change the picture completely. Starting from, almost, a random guess and guiding a system by simple like/hate interface one can find zillions of records, which he would never stumble upon otherwise. And the best thing is: you don't want to integrate into this - you looooose! Nobody would miss a particular artist, mainstream or not, if there are thousands of others out there - free of charge and ready to be heard. This, in turn, will lead to larger diversity in music styles (due to diversification of tastes), more independent production and deflation of prices for music. Musicians will have to live with little revenues or find alternative ways to make money (T-shirts, concerts, etc.) But in general, consumer wins. Totally.