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I think in many ways Guild Wars kept the innovation going better than World of Warcraft. They also made it easy to level up doing your preferred activities rather than grinding “kill 5 kobold” quests. The combat is a lot more action-filled as well with the dodge mechanic and spells that don’t need to be channeled.
I think a lot of their ability to add these improvements came from selling the game as free-to-play with one time purchases so there isn’t as much reason to force you to grind every single day for monthly subscriber growth
At various points in the past, record labels were the ones taking the big risks and getting the big paybacks, just like any business, fronting the funds for expensive studio time and the people to run them.
And many bands took personal offence at this, and continue to do, despite being the beneficiaries of the whole sordid industry at the time. Now that the costs of production and distribution have dropped in certain areas - there’s still things that you need Abbey Road Studio One and 96 expert musicians for - artists expect a fairer deal.
But who decides what the value was of the label’s work in the first place? If they did all the promotion and legwork to get the artist into the limelight and keep them there, does or doesn’t that work deserve perpetual royalties?
I don’t know why streaming rights and licensing weren’t newly negotiated deals but I guess for artists like FourTet who arrived when they did, downloads and streaming were covered by a ‘digital’ clause.
Labels are full of people who love music and work their nuts off promoting musicians, building their web and social presences, getting them booked onto support slots, playlists, radio shows, festivals, cleaning up after them, and championing them, but labels are also cynical and heartless and will drop an act without compunction if sales don’t happen. I’ve hundreds of brilliant promo albums on my shelves from my days on student radio and nearly all those acts released nothing more.
Given the scale of competition and number of acts, I have no idea how anyone could be a sales success without a central organization coordinating things. I don’t know much about Taylor Swift but is she a huge success without the involvement of a label?
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