I hate to say this, but in my experience, the biggest reason that many artists don't take control of their own careers and structure their business in an optimal way is that they just don't have those chops. But there do exist a lot of artists these days who are making their own deals with the big record companies, on their own terms. This is because the money involved in pop media as a whole (of which the music business is an integral part) is now so huge that the record companies know they can't get too cocky. Ani DiFranco was one of the first to make millions on her own, and bands like Dave Matthews have also kept a lot of creative and financial independence. Also, look at Sean Coombs. He is so big, it's sick. The record companies and their agents have fought back by manufacturing bands and holding their reigns (boy and girl bands).
Nik is correct, "I hate to say this, but in my experience, the biggest reason that many artists don't take control of their own careers and structure their business in an optimal way is that they just don't have those chops. But there do exist a lot of artists these days who are making their own deals with the big record companies, on their own terms. This is because the money involved in pop media as a whole (of which the music business is an integral part) is now so huge that the record companies know they can't get too cocky. Ani DiFranco was one of the first to make millions on her own, and bands like Dave Matthews have also kept a lot of creative and financial independence. Also, look at Sean Coombs. He is so big, it's sick. The record companies and their agents have fought back by manufacturing bands and holding their reigns (boy and girl bands)." The complexity is considerable. There are so many layers to production, marketing and distribution. The most interesting recent developements imo are the SBUX involvement in producing and selling music and the Garth Brooks exclusive with WMT. These are sea changes in the biz cutting the traditional hiearchy out of the loop, transfering wealth to retailing corps eventually. Similar in concept to the way HMO's transfered wealth away from medical proffessionals to corps.
Here is a good article describing how the recording industry works: http://www.bombhiphop.com/newbomb/bombpages/linernotes.html Long live the independent cheap musicdownload sites where most of the money goes to the artists! (if there is any like that)