for full disclosure of folks who might not know I run the music community web site for Creative Commons where Bob/gurdonark is major star so I think (hope?) I get the tribal aspect of things.

Finding talent takes talent. Finding special talent takes special talent. I don’t want to live in a world where there isn’t room for the person that brought me Ray, Aretha, Otis and Zeppelin. I take it for granted this person has a role in society, Internet or not, label or not. I would like to know how we are servicing him/her? (Mainly so I can implement the features on my site.)

But my main point was to get at the seeming discrepancy in Derek’s post between saying they are neutral unbiased service and then visiting cd baby and seeing ‘Editors Picks’ below which it says ‘We listen to everything!’ implying to me that they listen with ear toward guiding the consumer. That’s classic taste-making, no? Otherwise that’s like FedEx saying: We look in every box!