Anyone who’s read at any length about the new, digitally-based music business paradigm knows that it’s entirely possible for an artist or group to make a living in a post-label world where album sales are no longer the industry-sustaining cash cow they once were.

According to a vast number of trend pieces, all you need is a robust social network of fans, a killer marketing concept, and a Kickstarter campaign to become the next Amanda Palmer, who last year raised over a million dollars from her fans that funded a self-released album, Theatre is Evil, that made it to number 10 on the Billboard 200 chart.

The problem is that musical ability and a knack for marketing aren’t necessarily connected — for every master salesman like David Bowie there’s a reclusive Neil Young who is just as musically gifted but can barely be bothered to take a publicity photo. Or, as Shoutabl co-founder Travis Donovan puts it, “These days when you start a band, you’re just inundated with all of these places you feel you need to be. It’s so fragmented, it’s so disconnected, and artists have moved away from the idea that they’re a valuable destination, that they can curate a community around themselves without handing over that community to Twitter or Facebook, who really don’t care about your financial interests.”

Read the full story: Fortune