The same techniques that can help people find good music by as-yet undiscovered artists could also positively transform the dissemination of works by already-established recording stars.

Currently, not even the biggest names make any significant money from the sale of their recordings.  Almost everything they earn comes from their live performances, which necessitates a grueling life of continual touring.

This wouldn’t have to be the case if the music industry were more cost-effective at the core things it does.  The most important business functions of today's music industry are to match available content to tastes—i.e., to dig through the mountains of material being produced to find the music that people are most apt to like (performed under the name of “Artist & Repertoire,” or A&R)—and then to make people aware it’s out there and available (more simply known in the music industry, like everywhere else, as “marketing”).

At present, the major record labels are the predominant entities performing these functions.  Radio stations basically piggyback off the choices of the record labels, and music retailers piggyback off the radio stations’ choices.

As noted previously, the record labels are overwhelmed by the amount of music clamoring for their attention, because it's not economically feasible for them to hire enough reliable assessors of content to give a reasonable evaluation to it all.  It’s this structural problem that creates the wall of indifference that musicians who are unable to get their demos listened to find so demoralizing.

At the same time, record labels waste so much money on traditional forms of push-based marketing (e.g., endless streams of give-away trinkets and tchotchkes that nobody actively wants) that by the time a recording is sold, there’s virtually nothing left to pay the artists who created the music.

A shared online music site powered by the recommendations of independent taste mavens would both discover the best songs being created and let the public know about them in a much more cost-effective way, since it doesn’t require anyone to spend money wooing anyone else.  The mavens will genuinely want to hear what the musicians have created, consumers will genuinely want to hear what people whose tastes they trust have recommended, and the communications will all take place online and thus essentially for free.

For example, if a song sold for a dollar, 65 cents could go to the musicians who created it (as opposed to basically nothing today), 25 cents could be split among the taste maven(s) whose particular recommendations led the consumer to buy it (compared to infamously meager salaries today), and the shared music site could collect a dime for providing the environment that enables it all to take place (rather than a traditional record label pocketing virtually everything).

Everyone except traditional music companies would be better off than they are today.  Musicians from unknowns to global celebrities would be able to earn more and enjoy a better lifestyle, without today’s demands for incessant touring.  Critics and other taste mavens would gain in influence as well as income.  Most important of all, consumers would have convenient access to a more open, sophisticated, and diverse range of music that’s better able to meet their own personal tastes.  With so many advantages, it’s hard to see why an online service like this would not end up supplanting a lot of the traditional music business.