Lucas said: “Musicians really *aren’t* businesses. By definition they do what they do for its own sake. Managers are the business half of a musician’s life, and I think that they’ll remain in the new world order.”

There are a lot of different types of relationships between being a musician and any business that might come into play around that. When a musician ends up having business interests around their music, they may find others to perform roles, like management, that serve those interests. A great manager might practically represent all of a musician’s business interests.

But, it’s still the musician’s business interests. It’s ultimately the musician’s business, whether they think about it that way, or not. (Many don’t want to think about it that way. Many later regret not thinking about it that way. . .)

Right now, in many areas of work and business, there are more and more opportunities for people to directly manage their own service needs (e.g., financial, real estate, printing, CD replication, advertising, etc.) without hiring a dedicated (personal) manager.

Effectively, services like CD Baby provides a direct interface to certain business operations such that a musician can choose not to have a dedicated “music business” manager.

CD Baby is a true “web business” not just because it’s a website-based service, but because it’s part of the “web model” of business services that is eating away at monolithic corporate / vertical-ownership models across most areas of business. For any type of work now, you more and more build a business by linking to and into services.

IMHO, to be a musician with business interests in the era of the web means embracing true web business, either directly or via the peeps who look out for your interests.