When it comes to musicians and their relationship to labels, the New Economy is not outdated. The Music Industry Blog describes the relationship between musicians and labels as constantly changing. This not only affects the technology used, but also the changed meanings of market participants.
That cannot be summed up in a nutshell, as we know, a completely new environment with countless tools has emerged. In the past, musicians were dependent on labels, but today they can easily publish themselves. Countless tools are available for production and post-production, and the same applies to marketing.
Musicians do not need labels, they can easily found them and if a relationship is entered into with a label, then the relationship is often no longer permanent. From an extreme point of view, the benefit of the labels lies in the initial promotion, they say in the article below. Once musicians are known, they can easily market themselves.
There is more in the following article, which also includes an interesting graphic with the different market participants: Labels are going to become more like VCs than they probably want to be.