The problem isn't so much that nobody buys the music, because there's ways around that obviously where you can actually make a ton of money if you're willing to make certain legitimate hustles work. Let's be honest, we know that in dance music there's generally more access to your own personal funds for certain people but labels playing fast and loose with royalties for their own aggendas, bad publishing deals, getting tied up in contracts with the majors... That still happens even here and always did. Look at the history of TRAX in house. I'm certain that there's at least one or two labels from the grime/dubstep days that a lot of artists might've thrived on and then later they learned they weren't seeing any money from it. In fact, wasn't there a specific label that I think the more 'wonky' side had that did really well, but had to dramatically close and afterwards the artists said "Yeah we never saw a dime from those releases"? Goes to show.
The problem Corpse points to is the curatorial aspect of Music as Artistic Content. Red Bull are profiting off their ability to cut the middleman out and not support traditional music mags (like a Mixmag would ideally function) and instead be the providers of the history and the information. Now, a lot of this history has been ignored by traditional music journalism/media because it never fell in the primary aggendas of record companies and sales; a Rolling Stone for example should easily put their time and effort into documenting the life and times of Junie Morrison, but their money is APPARENTLY in Pearl Jam Comeback albums. Sad state of affairs.
That conundrum is the real danger for me because you can have these people in the background doing their thing... Kids are smart; they don't think Doc Marten is cool because they set up a booth at the festival they wanted to go to. They're here to dance, talk, enjoy music, whatever. But the thing is who they determine to give that money to, what music is WORTH Keeping alive.
Without going into it, I was trying to pitch a huge Road Rap narrative article to a certain magazine/website, about how it's been a decade of on-off flirtations from the mainstream but now it seems able to reach these audiences that Grime had done for years. Essentially they told me they didn't want to commit because "There Was No Story" but I imagine that its because Road Rap cannot get them the clientele of hip, young people with money to blow without any real 'risk' like Grime does. Geenus joked he could make Rinse a global brand because Dubstep was "Safe Grime" and right now the reality is Grime has become "Safe Road Rap".
Now that's a very specific conundrum that irks me but again its the decision of what genres/musicians/stories are profitable to these magazines/websites or even places like the MOMA PS1 stuff in NYC where you have all this music presented to an arthouse audience... Why are x people more commodifiable than others, why is it the same spaces dependant on the same influencers, why is there always the ONE act out of a group of people doing similar things. Because very very rarely do they then take effort to ensure everyone is getting recognition and notice, its whomever have the direct relationships or whom they see the benefit.
Corporate Sponsorship of Music isn't bad because money's being made at its expense in my view. Its that when that profit can't be made, then that music is deemed unvaluable and therefore unimportant.