Seth Godin On The Diminishing Force Called Gatekeepers

From my favourite marketing guru Seth Godin, (bold highlights mine)

Amanda Hocking is making a million dollars a year publishing her own work to the Kindle. No publisher.

Rebecca Black has reached more than 15,000,000 listeners, like it or not, without a record label.

Are we better off without gatekeepers? Well, it was gatekeepers that brought us the unforgettable lyrics of Terry Jacks in 1974, and it's gatekeepers that are spending a fortune bringing out pop songs and books that don't sell.

I'm not sure that this is even the right question. Whether or not we're better off, the fact is that the gatekeepers--the pickers--are reeling, losing power and fading away. What are you going to do about it?

Read the rest here.

Whether applied to commerce, music or politics, the forces of technology aided decentralization appear to be rapidly eroding the power of centralized “gatekeepers”.